Imperial democracy; a study of the relation of government by the people, equality before the law, and other tenets of democracy, to the demands of a vigorous foreign policy and other demands of imperial dominion

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JV 568 1899 .J82

Imperial democracy; a study of the relati

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IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY

A STUDY OF THE RELATION OF GOVERNMENT
BY THE PEOPLE, EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW,
AND OTHER TENETS OF DEMOCRACY, TO THE
DEMANDS OF A VIGOROUS FOREIGN POLICY
AND OTHER DEMANDS OF IMPERIAL DOMINION

BY

DAVID STARR JORDAN

PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANFORD, JR., UNIVERSITY

** They enslave their children's children who
make compromise with sin." Lowell.

NEW YORK

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1899

A..

■izx^

t

Copyright, iSgg,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

TO

JOHN J. VALENTINE, ESQ.,

OF

Oakland, California,

IN

RECOGNITION OF HIS UNSELFISH PATRIOTISM

AND

UNSHAKEN COURAGE.

PREFATORY NOTE.

The present volume contains eight addresses bearing on the
policy of the United States, especially concerning the war with
Spain and its results.

The first address " Lest We Forget," was delivered May 25th,
l8g8, on the occasion of the graduation of the Class of i8g8, in
the Leland Stanford Junior University. As this address has in a
sense a historical value, being one of the very first of Inany of
its kind, it is here published exactly as delivered with the change
of a word or two only and the omission of a brief quotation.
The second address, "Colonial Expansion," delivered before
the Congress of Religions at Omaha in October, 1898, is here
modified by the omission of a few passages which were used also
on the previous occasion. The third address, '■ A Blind Man's
Holiday,'' was read on February 14th, 1899, before the Gradu-
ate Club of Leland Stanford Junior University, and afterwards
repeated before the congregation of Temple Emanu-El in San
Francisco and the Berkeley Club in Oakland. It was reprinted
for general circulation under the title of " The Question of the
Philippines," by the courtesy of Mr. John J. Valentine, who has
also published a similar edition of " Lest We Forget." The
essay on the " Colonial Lessons of Alaska " was delivered be-
fore the University Extension Club of San Jos^ ; that on the
"Lessons of the Paris Tribunal," before the Congregationalist
Club in San Francisco. The essay on " A Continuing City "
was delivered before the New Charter Association of San Fran-
cisco.

The essay on the " Last of the Puritans " is introduced to show
the substantial identity of the arguments for slavery or control
vii

vm PREFATORY NOTE.

of man by man, benevolent or otherwise, with those for im-
perial dominion or the control of nation by nation, of race by
race, each has industrial and civil good for its avowed purpose,
and each has brute force for its method.

I am indebted to Mr Walter H. Page, editor of the Atlantic
Monthly, for permission to reprint " The Colonial Lessons of
Alaska," to Dr. N. C. Oilman, editor of the New World, for the
privilege of republishing the essay on " Colonial Expansion,''
to Whitaker and Ray of San Francisco for permission to use
" The Last of the Puritans," and to Mr. J. M. Rice, editor of the
Forum, for permission to reprint "The Lessons of the Paris
Tribunal of Arbitration."

DAVID STARR JORDAN,
Leland Stanford Junior University, Palo Alto,
Santa Clara Co., California.

CONTENTS.

1. Lest We Fbrget i

2. Colonial Expansion 39

3. A Blind Man's Holiday 61

4. The Colonial Lessons of Alaska 181

5. The Lessons of the Fans Tribunal of Arbitration 215

6. A Continuing City 241

7. The Captain Sleeps 265

8. The I-ast of the Puritans 275

ix

I.

"LEST WE FORGET.''

IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

"LEST WE FORGET."*

As educated men and women, in your hands lies the
future of the State. It is for you and such as you to
work out the problems of democracy. This is my justi-
fication in speaking to you of the present crisis. For
a great world crisis is on us, and this year of 1898 may
mark one of the three great epochs in our history.

Twice before in our national life have we stood in the
presence of a great crisis. Twice before have we come
to the parting of the ways, and twice has our choice been
controlled by wise counsel.

The first crisis followed the War of the Revolution.
Its question was this : What relation shall the emanci-
pated colonies bear to one another? The answer was
the American Constitution, the federation of self-govern-
ing and United States.

*" An address to the Members of the Graduating Class of 1898.
in Leland Stanford Junior University j delivered May 25, 1898,

3

4 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

The second crisis came through the growth of slavery.
The union of the States " could not endure, half slave,
half free." The emancipation proclamation of Abraham
Lincoln marked our decision that the Union should
endure ; and that all that made for division should be
swept away.

The third great crisis is on us now. The war with
Spain is only a part of it. The question is not : Can
we capture Manila, Havana, Porto Rico or the Canaries?
It is not what we can take or what we can hold. The
American navy and the American army can accomplish
all we ask of them with time and patience.

Battles are fought to-day through engineering and
technical skill, not through physical dash. The great
cannon speaks the language of science, and individual
courage is helpless before it. The standing of our naval
officers in matters of engineering is beyond question.
There are a hundred nameless lieutenants in our war-
ships who, if opportunity offered, could write their names
beside those of Grenville and Nelson and Farragut and
Dewey. The glory of Manila is not dim beside that of
Mobile or Trafalgar. The cool strength and soberness
of Yankee courage, added to the power of naval en-
gineering, could meet any foe on earth on equal terms,
and here the terms are not equal. Personal fearlessness
our adversaries possess, and that is all they have. That
we have, too, in like measure. Everything else is ours.
We train our guns against the empty shell of a medi-
aeval monarchy, broken, distracted, corrupt.

The war with Spain marks in itself no crisis. The
end is seen from the beginning. It was known to Spain
as clearly as to us. But her government had no re-

" LEST WE FORGET." $

course. They had come to the end of diplomacy, and
could only die fighting. " To die game " is an old habit
of the Spaniard. "Whatever else the war may do,"
says the Spanish diplomat, with pathetic honesty, "it
can only bring ruin to Spain."

It is too late for us now to ask how we got into the
war. Was it inevitable? Was it wise? Was it right-
eous? We need not ask these questions, because the
answers will not help us. We may have our doubts as
to one or aU of these, but all doubts we must keep to
ourselves. We are in the midst of battle, and must fight
to the end. The " rough-riders " are in the saddle.
"What though the soldier knew some one had blun-
dered? " The swifter, fiercer, more glorious our attacks,
the sooner and more lasting our peace. There is no
possible justification for the war unless we are strong
enough and swift enough to bring it to a speedy end.
If America is to be the knight-errant of the nations she
must be pure of heart and swift of foot, every inch a
knight.

The crisis comes when the war is over. What then?
Our question is not what we shall do with Cuba, Porto
Rico and the Philippines. It is what these prizes will
do to us. Can we let go of them in honor or in safety ?
if not, what if we hold them? What will be the reflex
effect of great victories, suddenly realized strength, the
patronizing applause, the ill-concealed envy of great
nations, the conquest of strange territories, the raising
of our flag beyond the seas? All this is new to us. It
is un-American; it is contrary to our traditions; it is
delicious ; it is intoxicating.

For this is the fact before us. We have come to our

6 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

manhood among the nations of the earth. What shall
we do about it? The war once finished, shall we go
back to our farms and factories, to our squabbles over
tariffs and coinage, our petty trading in peanuts and
postoffices? Or shall our country turn away from these
things and stand forth once for aU a great naval power,
our vessels in every sea, our influence felt over all the
earth? Shall we be the plain United States again, or
shall we be another England, fearless even of our own
great mother, second to her only in age and pres-
tige?

The minor results of war are matters of little moment
in comparison. Let us look at a few of them as we pass.
Most of them are not results at all. The glow of battle
simply shows old facts in new relation.

The war has stirred the fires of patriotism, we say.
Certainly, but they were already there, else they could
not be stirred. I doubt if there is more love of country
with us to-day than there was a year ago. Real love of
country is not easily moved. Its guarantee is its per-
manence. Love of adventure, love of fight, these are
soon kindled. It is these to which the battle spirit ap-
peals. Love of adventure we may not despise. It is
the precious heritage of new races ; it is the basis of
personal courage ; but it is not patriotism ; it is push.
Love of fight is not in itself unworthy. The race which
cannot fight if need be, is a puny folk destined to be the
prey of tyrants. But one who fights for fight's sake is a
bully, not a hero. The bully is at heart a coward. To
fight only when we are sure of the result, is no proof
of national courage.

Patriotism is the will to serve one's country ; to make

"LEST WE FORGET. 7

one's country better worth serving. It is a course of
action rather than a sentiment. It is serious rather than
stirring. The shrilling of the mob is not patriotism. It
is not patriotism to trample on the Spanish flag, to burn
fire-crackers, or to twist the Lion's tail. The shrieking
of war editors is not patriotism. Nowadays, nations
buy newspapers as they buy ships. Whatever is noisy,
whether in Congress or the pulpit, or on the streets,
cannot be patriotism. It is not in the galleries that we
find brave men. " Patriotism," says Dr. Johnson, " is
the last refuge of the scoundrel." But he was speaking
of counterfeit patriotism. There could not be a coun-
terfeit were there not also a reality.

But this I see as I watch the situation : True patri-
otism declines as the war spirit rises. Men say they
have no interest in reform until the war is over. There
is no use of talking of better financial methods, of fairer
adjustment of taxes, of wiser administration of affairs,
until the war fever has passed by. The patriotism of the
hour looks to a fight with some other nation, not towards '.
greater pride in our own.

The war has united at last the North and the South,
we say. So at least it appears. When Fitzhugh Lee is
called a Yankee, and all the haughty Lees seem proud
of the designation, we may be sure that the old lines of
division exist no longer. North and South, East and
West, whatever our blood, birth or rank, we Yankees
stand shoulder to shoulder in 1898. But our present
solidarity shows that the nation was sound already, else
a month could not have welded it together.

It is twenty-eight years ago to-day that a rebel soldier
who says —

8 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

" I am a Southerner,
I loved the South and dared for her
To fight from Lookout to the sea
With her proud banner over me."

Stood before the ranks of the Grand Army and spoke
these words :

" I stand and say that you were right ;

I greet you with uncovered head,
Remembering many a thundrous fight.

When whistling death between us sped ;
I clasp the hand that made my scars,

I cheer the flag my foemen bore,
I shout for joy to see the stars

All on our common shield once more.''

This was more than a quarter of a century ago, and
all this time the great loyal South has patiently and
unflinchingly accepted war's terrible results. It is not
strange, then, that she shows her loyalty to-day. The
" Solid South," the bugaboo of politicians, the cloak of
Northern venality, has passed away forever. The warm
response to American courage, in whatever -section or
party, in whatever trade or profession, shows that with
all our surface divisions, we of America are one in heart.
The impartial bitterness of Spanish hatred directed to-
ward all classes and conditions of Anglo-Saxons alike
emphasizes the real unity of race and nation.

There are some who justify war for war's sake.
Blood-letting " relieves the pressure on the boundaries."
It whets courage. It keeps the ape and tigei: alive in
men. All this is detestable. To waste good blood is
pure murder, if nothing is gained by it. To let blood
for blood's sake is bad in politics as it is in medicine.

" LEST WE FORGET." 9

War is killing, brutal, barbarous killing, and its direct
effects are mostly evil. The glory of war turns our
attention from civic affairs. Neglect invites corruption.
' Noble and necessary as was our Civil War, we have not
yet recovered from its degrading influences. Too often
the courage of brave men is an excuse for the depreda-
tions of venal politicians. The glorious banner of free-
dom becomes the cover for the sutler's tent.

The test of civilization is the substitution of law for
war J statutes for brute strength. No doubt diplomacy,
as one of our Senators has said, is mostly " a pack of
lies," and arbitration, as we have known it, is com-
pulsory and arbitrary compromise. But in the long run
truth will out, even in diplomacy. The nations who
suffer through clumsy and blundering tribunals of arbi-
tration will learn from this experience. They will find
means, at last, to secure justice as well as peace. As
private war gave way to security under national law, so
must public war give way to the law of civilization.

I hear men say to-day that war is necessary to the
Republic because we need new heroes for our worship.
The old heroes are getting stale. Those of the Revolu-
tion are half mythical. Washington and Greene were
never actually alive in real flesh and blood. Even Grant
and Sherman, Lee and Jackson, Thomas and Farragut
are names only to most of us. Our fathers knew them,
but theirs are not names to conjure with to-day. The
name of Dewey fills a popular want. The heroes of the
newspaper in times of peace are mere tinsel heroes.
Here is one with flesh and blood in him, a man of nerve
and courage and success.

All this is true, but our heroes were with us already.

10 IMPERIAL Democracy.

In times of peace they were ready for heroism. The
real hero is the man who does his duty. It does not
matter whether his name be on the headlines of the
newspapers or not. His greatness is not enhanced when
a street or a trotting horse is named for him. It is the
business of the Republic to make a nation of heroes.
The making of brave soldiers is only a part of the work
of making men. The glare of battle shows men in false
perspective. To one who stands in its light we give the
glory of a thousand. But we may applaud with the rest
as the great captains pass before us. They have earned
their renown, yet when " the tumult and the shouting
dies," still the crisis remains. What effect must the
war have on us ?

Our line of action seems a narrow one. Our policy
has been fully declared. Our armies invade Cuba to
put an end to disorder, brutality and murderous wrong.
In the words of the resolution of Congress :

" The abhorrent conditions which have existed for more than
three years in the island of Cuba, so near our own borders, have
shocked the moral sense of the people of the United States,
have been a disgrace to Christian civilization, and cannot longer
be endured."

And in recording the necessity which forces us to act
we disclaim all selfish intentions. Thus Congress used
these words which are already part of the record of his-
tory and which we may not forget ;

" The United States hereby disclaims any di^osition or inten-
tion to exercise sovejeignty, jurisdiction or control over said
islands except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its deter-
mination when that is accomplished to leave the government and
control of the island to its people."

"LEST WE FORGET. II

The wrongs we would avenge are not new to Spain.
By such craelties she has always held her possessions.
By such means she has lost most of them. Flanders,
Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Chili, Ciiba, all tell the same
story. Spain still belongs to the seventeenth century.
From the seventeenth century Cuba has escaped. To
her we shall bring order and relief. Her shackles once
broken, then we shall stay our hand. To Cuba Libre,
independent and free, we will leave the choice of her
own future.

But this is easier said than done. Cuba Libre has no
heart or will to choose. Her present nominal govern-
ment is not that of a republic. It is a political oligarchy,
which has its seat not in Havana, but in New York.
Cuba is helpless now. As a republic she will be helpless
stiU. Spanish blood and Spanish training ill prepare a
land for freedom. Freedom such as we know it has
never yet been won by people of Latin blood. The free-
dom of Spanish America is for the most part military
despotism. It is said of the government of Russia that
it is " despotism tempered by assassination." That of
most of our sister republics is assassination tempered by
despotism, Mexico, the best of them, is not a republic j
it is a despotism, the splendid tyranny of a man strong
and wise, who knows Mexico and how to govern her, a
humane and beneficent tyrant.

There are many noble men in Cuba, men of education
and character, with the culture and bearing of gentlemen.
Some of these I know, and one I have been proud to call
my friend, Felipe Poey, during fifty years professor in the
University of Havana. Most good men in Cuba hope
for the success of the insurgents, but they have not much

12 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

confidence in Cuban democracy. The common run of
the Cuban population is of a very diiferent class.

"The Cuban soldiers at Tampa," says John R.
Rathom, "are very small, excitable, erratic, physically
unfit. They go about the camps brandishing their
machetes and telling our infantrymen who tower above
them like giants, how they are going to cut the Span-
iards to pieces. Their whole spirit is one of frothy
boasting."

There are three things inseparable from the life of
the Cuban people to-day, the cigarette, the. lottery ticket,
and the machete. These stand for vice, superstition and
revenge. Above these the thoughts of the common man
in Cuba seldom rise. Most of the people cannot read,
and those who can, read largely the literature of vice.

From my own visit to Havana, two keen recollections
remain. In the early morning the markets are filled by
a long procession of loaded burros who came down from
the mountain side, These bring everything that is eat-
able, with the rest live pigs and sheep. Pigs and sheep
alike are tied in pairs and hung saddle-wise, head down-
ward, from the backs of the donkeys. Froin two until
four in the morning the long procession comes in, the
pigs lustily squealing, the sheep helpless and dumb. But
nobody cares for an animal's pain. There is no society
for prevention of cruelty to animals in Cuba. There are
not many who could understand even the purpose of
such a society. In Havana, bull-fights follow the church
services, not fights but slaughter. A horse lame and
blind is ripped up by an infuriated bull, who in turn is
done to death by the stab of a skilful butcher.

At Christmas time all interest centers in the lottery.

"LEST WE FORGET." 1 3

Everybody buys lottery tickets. Channs, fortune-tellers,
astrology and all the machinery of superstition are
brought into play to select the lucky numbers. How
many days old am I ? How many days old is my Dolores ?
How many days old was I on my lucky day when I drew
the prize last year? How can I find my lucky number?
These matters are talked of everywhere on the streets,
in the church, in the wine rooms, in the theaters. One
hears the parrots on their posts at the gate discussing
the very same questions. The birds rattle off the names
and numbers as glibly as their masters, and with as high
a conception of the possibilities of life.

It seems probable that most of the oppressed people,
crowded from their homes by Weyler's armies, will be
dead before we come to their relief. In starving out
Havana we shall doubtless starve them first. Those who
survive may become our bitterest enemies before the year
is out. For these people prefer the indolence of Spanish
rule with all its brutalities to the bustling ways of the
Anglo-Saxon. Many of them would take their chances
of being starved or butchered rather than to build roads,
wash their faces, and clean up their towns. To suppress
the lottery and the cock-fight would be to rob them of
most that makes life worth living. The Puritan Sabbath
and the self-control it typifies in their minds would be
worse than the flames of Purgatory. Whether as a free
nation under our protection or whether governed by our
martial law, it will be no easy task to hold the peace in
Cuba Libre. The down-trodden Cuban and the Spanish
oppressor are the same in blood, the same in method.

But we may say that American enterprise will change
all this. It will flow into Cuba when Cuba is free. It

14 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

will clean up the cities, stamp out the fevers, build roads
where the trails for mule-sleds are, and railroads where
the current of traffic goes. It will make the pearl of the
Antilles the fairest island on the face of the earth.

No doubt all this will come if we give a stable gov-
ernment. Whatever else we say or do we must give such
a government. The nations of the world will hold us
responsible for Cuba through the years to come. A
virtual serfdom under American martial law is the fate of
Cuba, though we may declare her free and independent.

Why then shall we not hold Cuba, if she becomes
ours by right of conquest? Because that would be a
, cowardly thing to do. The justification of her capture
is that we do not want her. If we want Cuba, common
decency says that we must let her alone. Ours is a war
of mercy, not of conquest. This we have plainly declared
to all the nations. Perhaps we meant what we said,
though the speeches in Congress do not make this clear.
If we can trust the records, our chief motives were three :
Desire for political capital, desire for revenge, and sym-
pathy for humanity.

It was desire for political capital that forced the hand
of the President. "The war," says Dr. Frank Drew,
did not begin as an honorable war. If it is to become
such, it must be made honorable by other men than those
whose votes committed us to it."

If we retire with clean hands, it will be because our

hands are empty. To keep Cuba or the Phihppines

would be to follow the example of conquering nations.

Doubtless England would do it in our place. The habit

' of domination makes men unscrupulous.

Professor Nicholson of Edinburgh has said : " There

" LEST WE FORGET." 1 5

can be no question, in the light of history, that the polit--
ical instinct of the English people — or to adopt the pop-
ular language of the moment, the original sin of the
nation — is to covet everything of its neighbor's worth
coveting, and it is not content until the sin is complete."
No wonder England now pats us on the back. We are
following her lead. We are giving to her methods the
sanction of our respectability. Of all forms of flattery,
imitation is the sincerest.

By a war of conquest fifty years ago we took from
Mexico her fairest provinces. For the good of humanity
we did it, no doubt, and along the lines of manifest des-
tiny. Brave battles our soldiers fought, but for all that,
the war itself was most inglorious. So it reads in history
as we write it to-day. It is iniquitous in history as writ-
ten in Mexico.

Shall then the war for Cuba Libre come to an inglori-
ous end ? If we make anything by it, it will be most in-
glorious. It will be without honor if its two millions a
day are made good by conquered territory. Neither for
conquest nor for revenge have we sent forth the army of
the Republic. " Let us beware," says J. K. H. Burgwin,
" of placing ourselves in the position of doing a noble and
generous act and then demanding that a bankrupt and
humbled enemy shall pay our expenses." If we are going
to hold the prizes of war or to use them in thrifty trade
we should never have set out on the errands of humanity.

The nations of Europe look with jealousy on our pos-
sibilities of strength. "If I only," some king may say —
" if I only had all these men, all this land, all these
resources, I would eclipse the glory of Caesar, of Charle-
magne, of Napoleon." If we turned everything into

1 6 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

fighting, what a fight we could make. But we have gone
about our business, a vast nation of common people, care-
less of European complications, indifferent to European
glory, unconscious of our power.

For the end of government by the people is to fit the
people to control their own affairs. The basis of our gov-
ernment is the town meeting. The people manage their
local business, and send their wisest men as delegates to
look after the interests of the nation. This was the
dream of the fathers. If there has been much change and
some degeneration, yet in substance the thoughts of the
fathers prevail. The liberties of the people are secure
because they are everywhere in the people's hands.
America is not a power among the nations. She is a
nation among the powers. A " power " is a country which
is concerned with affairs not her own and which develops
the machinery to make such concern effective. A nation
minds her own business.

The spirit of our foreign policy has been to avoid all
display of power. It was. set forth in Washington's fare-
well address, in these memorable words :

" The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is,
in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little
political connection as possible. * * * Europe has a set of primary
interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence
she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which
are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must
be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordi-
nary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and
collisions of her friendships or enmities. Our .detached and dis-
tant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course.
* * * Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation .'
Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground .' Why, by inter-
weaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our

"LEST WE FORGET." 17

peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalsliip,
interest, humor, or caprice ? It is our true course to steer clear
of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

The America of which Washington dreamed should
grow strong within herself, should avoid entangling alli-
ances with foreign nations, should keep out of all fights
and all friendships that are not her own, should secure
no territory that might not be self-governing, and should
acquire no provinces that might not in time be numbered
among the United States. To this policy his followers
closely adhered. Even gratitude to France never made
us her catspaw in her struggle against England. No out-
flow of sympathy has caused us to interfere in behalf of
Ireland or Armenia or Greece.

But the world is smaller than in Washington's day.
Steam and electricity have bound the world together.
The interests of one nation are those of all nations. The
interests of Armenia, Cape Colony and Ceylon are closer
to us to-day than those of France and Germany were to
our fathers. Traditions are worthy of respect only when
they serve the real needs of the present. So it may be
that with changed conditions the wise counsel of the past
may be open to revision. Are times not already ripe for
a change in national policy?

Let us look for a moment at the policy of England.
The United States is great through minding her own busi-
ness ; England through minding the business of the world.
In the Norse Mythology the Mitgard-Serpent appears
in the guise of a cat, an animal small and feeble, but in
reality the mightiest and most enduring of all, for its tail
goes around the earth, growing down its own throat, and
by its giant force, it holds the world together. Eng-

1 8 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

land is the Mitgard-Serpent of the nations, shut in a
petty island; as Benjamin Franklin said, "an island
which compared to America is but a stepping stone in a
brook with scarce enough of it above water to keep one's
shoes dry." Yet, by the force of arms, the force of trade
and the force Of law she has become the ruler of the
earth. It is EngUsh brain and English muscle which hold
the world together.

No other agency of civilization has been so potent as
England's enlightened selfishness. Her colonies are of
three orders — ^friendly nations, subject nations and mili-
tary posts. The larger colonies are little united states.
They are republics and rule their own affairs. The sub-
ject nations and the military posts England rules by a
rod of iron, because no other rule is possible. Every
year England seizes new posts, opens new ports and
widens the stretch of her empire. But of all this Greater
Britain, England herself is but a little part, the ruling
head of a world-wide organism, "What does he know
of England who only England knows ? " No doubt as

Kipling says, England

" thinks her empire still
'Twixt the Strand and Holbom Hill,"

but the Strand would be half empty were it not that it
leads outward to Cathay. The huge business interests
of Greater Britain are the guarantee of her solidarity.
All her parts must hold together.

In similar relation to the Mother Country, America
must stand. Greater England holds over us the obliga-
tions of blood and thought and language and character.
Only the Saxon uiiderstands the Saxon. Only the Saxon
and the Goth know the meaning of freedom. " A sane-

"LEST WE FORGET." I9

tion like that of religion," says John Hay, " enforces our
partnership in all important affairs." Not that we should
enter into formal alliance with Great Britain. We can
get along well side by side, but never tied together.
When England suggests a union for attack and defense,
let us ask what she expects to gain from us. Never yet
did England offer us the hand in open friendUness, in
pure good faith, not hoping to get the best of the bargain.
This is the English government, which never acts with-
out interested motives. But the English people are our
friends in every real crisis, and that without caring over-
much whether we be right or not. War with England
should be forever impossible. The need of the common
race is greater than the need of the nations. The Anglo-
Saxon race must be at peace within itseK. Nothing is so
important to civilization as this. A war between Eng-
land and America fought to the bitter end might sub-
merge civilization. When the war should be over and
the smoke cleared away there would be but one nation
left, and that, Russia.

But though one in blood with England our course of
political activities has not lain parallel with hers. We
were estranged in the beginning, and we have had other
affairs on our hands. We have turned our faces west-
ward, and our work has made us strong. We have had
our forests to clear, our prairies to break, our rivers to
harness, our own problem of slavery to adjust. We have
followed the spirit of Washington's address for a hundred
years, until the movement of history has brought us to the
parting of the ways. Federalism or Imperialism — which
shall it be?

In the direction of imperialism we have already taken

20 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

certain steps. The promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine
is one of these. Its original impulse was a jealous regard
for the liberties of the republics of Latin America. We
made no objection to the present occupation of parts of
America by European powers but we shall prevent by
force any extension of such dominion. The cause of the
Monroe Doctrine was the danger to republicanism
through monarchial aggression. With the republics of
America our interests were supposed to be in unison.
But our real interests lie now in other directions. We
have a thousand ties binding us to Europe for one to Latin
America. Even Japan and China are more to us than
the states of South America. Moreover, the republics we
would guard are really only republics in name. They
have no more of a republican spirit than has Italy or
Spain, and vastly less than England or Germany. The
aggressions of England on Venezuela which our strong
protest prevented were really in the interest of civiliza-
tion. These republics hate the United States, her peo-
ple and her institutions. They resent our protection and
repel our patronage, and as for us, we are likely to de-
spise them rather than to love them. The guardian of the
two Americas must use a strong hand if it would save all
of its wards from barbarism.

So the Monroe Doctrine is not al6ne a willingness to
protect our sister republics from European aggression.
It must become a means of holding them in order. So
long as the Monroe Doctrine is put forth, so long must we
be in some degree surety for the good behavior of South
America. This necessity has carried us away from our
traditional attention to our own affairs. It will carry
us still further unless the policy be reversed.

" LEST WE FORGET." 21

The purchase of Alaska marks another movement
away from self-government. This Vast, wild, resourceful
land, unfit for habitation for the most part, unfit for self-
control, we have made a province of our republic. We
have placed it under our flag, but the flag is all we have
given it. On stretches of coast as long as that of Cali-
fornia, dotted with fishing villages, the United States has
exercised no authority whatever. Over the whole coast
of Alaska, from Sitka to Point Barrow, there have been
only scattering and sporadic efforts at national rule.
With a population so weak and scattered, self-govern-
ment is impossible, and we have no other form of govern-
ment to offer. The condition of Alaska to-day is simply
a disgrace to us. The host that fare to the Klondike
make their own government as they go along. What
little government Alaska had in the past has now been
mostly withdrawn on account of t;he war with Spain. We
need the patrol vessels for coast defense. This is as
though we sent San Francisco police to garrison Manila.
In public affairs we can never attend to two things at a
time. Considering our possibilities and our intentions,
we have treated the Aleutian Islands as shabbily as
Spain has treated Cuba, and Russia has almost as good
a right to protest against our ways as we have to protest
against those of Spain.

This difference obtains. The natives of Alaska are
gentle and tractable and away from the eyes of the world.
They have no friends, no element of the picturesque,
and our cruelty is not violence but neglect. We have
wantonly allowed the destruction of the sea otter, their
chief means of subsistence. We have wasted the sea-lion
which furnishes their boats. Starvation and death are

22 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

everjrwhere imminent in these coast settlements of
Alaska, and the blame for it rests on us. " Reconcen-
trados " between Arctic snows and San Francisco greed,
the Aleuts must starve and freeze. From Prince Wil-
liam's Sound to Attu, nearly fifteen hundred miles, not a
village has a sure means of support left to-day.

According to latest reports from Port Etches, all the
people of the village live together in the cellar of an
abandoned warehouse. Wosnessenski was starving last
year. In Belkofski, Morjovi, Atka, Attu, and a half
dozen other villages, the Company's store had been
closed because the people can no longer pay for sup-
plies. Civilization has made flour, sugar, tea and to-
bacco necessities of life, and these they can get no
longer.

As our government is constituted, men must govern
themselves and send their delegates to Congress. J'or
others we have no government at all. The great cor-
porations in Alaska are still squatters on government
land, and the disputes among their employees must be
settled by blow of fist, or they are not settled at all.
Open warfare with knife and gun has existed more than
once along the salmon rivers. This is not the fault of
the companies. They are law-abiding enough when
there is any law. " But there runs no law of God nor
man to the north of fifty-three." The villages of Aleuts
and Esquimaux are ruled by the Company storekeeper
and the Russian priest, each with authority unlimited
and unsupported by law. The stanch laws of prohibi-
tion by which liquor is excluded from Alaska cannot en-
force themselves, and no other adequate force is provided.
The whole matter is a huge farce, and its necessary

"LEST WE FORGET." 23

result is contempt for law. With a colonial bureau like
that of England, the problems of ruling an inferior and
dependent people would be simple enough. Such a
bureau could take care of Alaska and could give good
government to any territory over which our flag may
float.

Such a bureau we must have if Alaska is not to remain
a matter of public embarrassment. Such a bureau could
operate Hawaii as well. Hawaii cannot govern itself
under our federal forms. It is an oligarchy in the nature
of things. Under colonial management it would be
peaceful and prosperous. The more it had to do, the
more effective such a colonial bureau would become.
Every governmental department tends to aggrandize
itself. Colonies would demand more colonies. If we
have Alaska already and are certain to take Hawaii, why
not establish such a colonial bureau and manage them
as England manages Hong Kong and Singapore and
Jamaica? In the same way we may control Cuba, which
falls as a ripe pear into our hands. And Porto Rico
must go with Cuba. The Philippines are not very far
away. They are nearer to San Francisco than Boston
was to Philadelphia in the times of Washington, and the
transfer of news is a matter of a few hours only. The
Philippines are as large as New England and New York,
with a population greater than all the Rocky Moun-
tain country and the Pacific Slope combined. They
have a hard population to manage, to be sure, a sub-
stratum of Malays, lazy and revengeful, over these a
social layer of thrifty Chinese and canny Japanese, then
next a Spanish aristocracy and a surface scum of the
wanderers of all the world. In the unexplored interiors
3

24 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

of the great islands live the wild tribes of negritos, un-
tamed black imps, as incapable of self-government or of
any other government as so many monkeys. Spain has
stood at the gateway of this rich land and taken toll of
whatever goes out. This is all she has attempted. We
could not do much more, but whatever is possible we
lean do as well as any one else. If we do not keep
1 the Philippines they will surely fall into worse hands.

And all these territories are to-day virtually under the
American flag. But why stop here? One great need
of the world's commerce is a canal across the territory
of Nicaragua, and we may seize that turbulent little
republic as a guarantee for the security and neutrality of
the canal. Then Costa Rica has her coffee fields, and
there is a wondrous wealth in Guatemala. In the Caro-
line Islands we would find a good coaling station. We
have literary interest in Samoa at least, and in the name
of the Ladrones, the islands of the great thieves, we
ought to find something suggestive. An open port of
our own on the coast of China would give our commerce
its proper level of equality. Perhaps Swatow would
suffice for us after Russia, and Germany, and France,
and England has each made its choice.

Then there are the Blue Canaries. From the tall
peak of Teneriffe we can overlook the entrance to the
Mediterranean and keep our watch on the politics of
Europe. As England is the assignee of bankrupt Egypt,
shall we not seize the assets of bankrupt Spain ? To be
sure we come in late in the game of territorial expansion.
We must take what we can get, and we cannot get much
except by force. Still we must have it. For all this
and more, according to Theodore Roosevelt and a host

" LEST WE FORGET." 25

of Others, is our " manifest destiny." To help along
" manifest destiny," is the purpose of the war with Spain.
The spell is on us, and it is the more irresistible because
it came unawares. Recently in an address in Boston,
Richard Olney, one of the wisest of our public men, who
checked the bold, bad British Lion by a bluff as big as
the lion's own roar, made a vigorous plea for national
expansion. He says :

" But it is even a more pitiful ambition for such a country to
aim to seclude itself from the world at large, and to live a life as
isolated and independent as if it were the only country on the
footstool. A nation is as much a member of society as an indi-
vidual. * • » Does a foreign question or controversy pre-
sent itself, appealing however forcibly to our sympathies or sense
of right — ^what happens the moment it is suggested that the
United States should seriously participate in its settlement .' A
shiver runs through all the ranks of capital, lest the uninterrupted
course of money-making be interfered with j the cry of ' Jingo ! '
comes up in various quarters ; advocates of peace at any price
make themselves heard from innumerable pulpits and rostrums ;
while practical politicians invoke the doctrine of the Farewell
Address as an absolute bar to all positive action/ The upshot is
more or less an explosion of sympathy or antipathy at more or
less public meetings, and, if the case is a very strong one, a more
or less tardy tender by the Government of its ' moral support.'
Is that a creditable part for a great nation to play in the affairs
of the world ? « • * This country was once the pioneer, and
is now the million^re. It behooves it to recognize the changed
conditions, and to realize its great place among the power of the
earth. It behooves it to accept the commanding position be-
longing to it with all its advantages on the one hand, and all its
burdens on the other. It is not enough for it to vaunt its great-
ness and superiority, and call upon the rest of the world to ad-
mire and be duly impressed. Posing before less favored peoples
as an exemplar of the superiority of American institutions may
be justified and may have its uses ; but posing alone is like an-
swering the appeal of a mendicant by bidding him admire your

26 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

own sleekness, your own fine clothes and handsome house, and
your generally comfortable aiid prosperous condition. He possibly
should do that and be grateful for the spectacle, but what he really
asks and needs is a helping hand. The mission of this country, if
it has one, and I veiily believe it has, is not merely to pose, but to
act — ^and, while always governing itself by prudence and common
sense and making its own special interests the first and para-
mount objects of its care, to forego no fitting opportunity to
further the progress of civilization practically as well as theoreti-
cally by timely deeds as well as by eloquent words. There is
such a thing for a nation as a ' splendid isolation ' — as when, for
a worthy cause, for its own independence, or dignity, or vital in-
terests, it unshrinkingly opposes itself to a hostile world. But
isolation that is nothing but the shirking of the responsibility of
high place and great power is simply tgnominious."

" The doors to that shining destiny are open wide," says a
late writer in the San Francisco Chronicle. " Shall the Nation
pass them or shall it shrink back into itself and leave to other
and braver hands the prizes of the future. To broaden out in
the field of enterprise and acquisition is the duty of the Republic,
to strengthen itself whenever it safely can, to do its part in re-
deeming the victims of ignorance as well as of cruelty, to gather
to itself the riches that will free it from debt, and make its in-
fluence paramount in the world's affairs as the greatest part of
the Anglo-Saxon brotherhood ; to plant itself in the midst of
events, and mold them to its mighty purpose."
•t

Such is the dream of American imperialism. Its
prizes lie in our hands unasked. The fates have forced
them upon us. But before we seize them, now let us
ask what it will cost? First, it will cost life and money
in rich measure. Kipling tells us the cost of British
Admiralty :

" We have fed our sea for a thousand years,
And she calls us still unfed,
Though there's never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead.

"LEST WE FORGET." 2/

We've strewed our best to the weeds' unrest,
To the shark and the sheering gull ;

If blood be the price of admiralty
Lord God I we have paid it in full."

If we have a navy that can make history we must pay
for it as England does, not only in blood but in cold,
hard cash. This means more taxes, heavy taxes, more
expenditures, more waste. It means the revision of our
tax laws, a tariff for revenue only with every element of
protection for American industries squeezed out of it.
The government will need all it can get. We must
manage our colonies that they may yield revenue. We
must cherish commerce as we have tried to cherish
manufacture, and we must cherish manufacture and
agriculture through commerce. Much more of a navy
we need to preserve ourselves from imbecility. One
victory like that of Manila may save us from a dozen
Insults, and we must have the means to win such victories.

So far this would not be unmixed evil, perhaps no
evil at all. But we must go farther. Imperialism de-
mands the maintenance of a standing army large enough
to carry out whatever we undertake. We must wholly
change our pension laws and deal with the veteran on a
basis of business, not of sentiment. Imperialism leaves
no place for sentiment in public affairs. To maintain
strong armies the nations of continental Europe sacrifice
everything else. The people are loaded with armor till
they cannot rise, and they dare not throw it off. Even
to-day Italy is on the verge of a revolution, and the cause
is the cost of the army. The Italian proverb says that
if one throws a stone from a window it will hit a soldier
or a priest, and the farmer pays for both.

28 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

The whole world must become the range of our in-
terest. We must make every American's house his
castle from Kamchatka to Kerguelen. We must be
quick to revenge and strong to bluff. We must never
fight when the issue is doubtful, and never fail to fight
if there is a point to be gained. We must give up our
foolish notions that America is big enough to maintain a
separate basis of coinage, a freeman's scale of wages, a
peculiar republican social order different from that of
the rest of mankind. We must open our own doors as
we would push open the doors of the world. We must
change the character of our diplomacy. We must make
statecraft a profession. Hitherto we have sent out our
ambassadors because to do so is the fashion among na-
tions, not because we have anything for them to do.
Hereafter they must go out to spread American influ-
ences. The plain, blunt, effective truth-telling of our
present diplomacy must give way to the power to carry
our point. We must not send men to foreign countries
because we do not want them at home. The dull in-
competence of our consular service must give way to a
system of trained agents. And this, too, has its com-
pensating reactions. As our foreign service is made
efffectiVe it will become dignified. This will help our
relations abroad because foreign nations judge us by the
quality of our representatives.

Our government must be changed for our changing
needs. We must give up the checks and balances in
our constitution. It is said that our great battleship
Oregon can turn about end for end within her own
length. The dominant nation must have the same
power. She must be capable of reversing her action in

"LEST WE FORGET. 29

a minute, of turning around within her own length.
This " our prate of statute and of state " makes impos-
sible. We shall receive many hard knocks before we
reach this condition, but we must reach it if we are to
"work mightily" in the affairs of the world. If we are
to deal with crises in foreign affairs we must hold them
with a steadier grasp than that with which we have held
the Cuban question. We cannot move accurately and
quickly under the joint leadership of a conservative and
steady-headed President, a hysterical or venal Senate,
and a House intent upon its own re-election. That
kind of checks and balances we must lay aside forever.
As matters are now. President, Senate and House check
each other's movements and the State falls over its own
feet

The government of the United States is the expres-
sion of the transient will of the people, so hemmed in by
checks and balances that positive action is difficult what-
ever the will of the majority for the moment may be.
This is the government for peace and self-defense, but
not for aggression. The government of England expresses
the permanent will of the intelligent people with such
checks as shut out ignorance and control incompetence.
The nation and not the individual man is the unit in its
actions.

Towards the English system we must approach more
and more closely if we are to deal with foreign affairs in
large fashion. The town-meeting idea must give way to
centralization of power. We must look away from our
own affairs, neglect them if you please, until the pres-
sure of growing expenditure forces us to attend to them
again, and to attend to them more carefully than we ever

30 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

yet have done. Good government at home must pre-
cede good government of dependencies. One reason
England is governed well is that misgovernment any-
where on any large scale would be fatal to her credit
and fatal to her power. She must call her best men to
her political service, because without them she would
perish.

It may be that the choice of imperialism is already
made. If so, we shall learn the lesson of dominion in
the hardest school of experience. That we shall ulti-
mately learn it I have no doubt, for ours is a nation of
apt scholars. We shall hold our own in war and diplo-
macy, we shall tie the hands of turbulent nations and
seize the assets of bankrupt ones, and we shall teach the
art of money-making to the dependent nations who shall
be our wards and slaves.

Some great changes in our system are inevitable, and
belong to the course of natural progress. Against them
I have nothing to say. Whatever our part in the affairs
of the world we should play it manfully. But with all
this I believe that the movement toward broad dominion
I so eloquently outlined by Mr. Olney, would be a step
i downward. It would be to turn from our highest pur-
i poses to drift with the current of manifest destiny. It
I would be not to do the work of America, but to follow
i the ways of the rest of the world. I make no plea for
j indifference or self-sufficiency or isolation for isola-
tion's sake. To shrink from world movements or to
! drift with the current is alike unworthy of our origin and
destiny. Only this I urge ; let our choice be made with
open eyes, not at the dictates of chance disguised as
I "Manifest Destiny." Unforgetting, counting all the

"LEST WE FORGET. 31

cost, let us make our decision. Let ours be sober, i
fearless, prayerful choice. The federal republic — the
imperial republic — ^which shall it be ?

There are three main reasons for opposing every step(
toward imperialism. First, dominion is brute force;
second, dependent nations are slave nations ; third, the
making of men is greater than the building of empires. ,

As to the first of these : The extension of dominion
rests on the strength of arms. Men who cannot hold
town meetings must obey through brute force. In
Alaska, for example, our occupation is a farce and scan-
dal. Only force can make it otherwise. Only by force
can the masses of Hawaii or Cuba be held to industry
and order. To furnish such power, we shall need a
colonial bureau, with its force of extra-national police.
A large army and navy must justify itself by doing some-
thing. Army and navy we must maintain for our own
defense, but beyond that they can do little that does
not hurt, and they must be used if they would be kept
alive. Even warfare for humanity falls to the level of
other wars, and all wars according to Benjamin Franklin,
are bad, some worse than others. The rescue of the
oppressed is only accomplished by the use of force
against the oppressor. The lofty purposes of humanity
are forgotten in the joy of struggle and the pride of con-
quest.

The other reasons concern the integrity of the Repub-
lic itself. This was the lesson of slavery, that no re-
public can " endure half slave and half free." The re-
publics of antiquity fell because they were republics of
the few only, for each citizen rested on the backs of nine
slaves. A republic cannot be an oligarchy as well. The

32 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

slaves destroy the republic. Wherever we have inferior
and dependent races within our borders to-day, we have
a political problem — " the Negro problem," " the Chinese
problem," "the Indian problem." These problems we
slowly solve. Industrial training and industrial pride
make a man of the Negro. Industrial interests many
even make a man of the Chinaman, and the Indian disap-
pears as our civilization touches him.

But in the tropics such problems are perennial and
insoluble, Cuba, Manila, Nicaragua, will be slave terri-
tories for centuries to come. These people in such a cli-
mate can never have self-government in the Anglo-
Saxon sense. Whatever form of control we adopt, we
shall be in fact. slave-drivers, and the business of slave-
driving will react upon us. Slavery itself was a disease
which came to us from the British West Indies. It
breeds in the tropics like yellow fever and leprosy. Can
even an imperial republic last, part slave, part free ?

But England endures, and her control of slave terri-
tories is her " doom and pride." What then of British
imperialism? From the standpoint of imperialism Eng-
land is an oligarchy, not a republic. Her government
is not self-rule, but the direction of commerce. It is
admiralty rather than democracy. Americans govern
themselves. Englishmen are ruled by the government
of their own choosing. Englishmen govern themselves
in municipal affairs, and in ways from which we have
much to learn. In foreign affairs their huge govem'
mental machine, backed by the momentum of tradition,
is all-powerful. This rules Ireland, India, Gibraltar,
Egypt, all England's dependencies and wards. The
other colonies are republics in fact. Canada, New Zeal-

" LEST WE FORGET. 33

and, the states of Australia — these are republics bound
to keep the peace with the mother country, but in no
other way controlled by her. Only ties of sentiment
bind Canada to England. In all practical matters, she
is one with the United States.

The stronger the governmental machine, and the more
adjustable its powers, the better the government. But
government is not the main business of a republic. If
good government were all, democracy would not deserve
half the effort that is spent upon it. For the function
of democracy is not to make government good. It is
to make men strong. Better government than any re-
public has yet enjoyed could be had 'in simpler and
cheaper ways. The automatic scheme of competitive
examination would give us better service at half the pre-
sent cost. Even an ordinary intelligence office, or states-
man's emplojmient bureau would serve us better than
conventions . and elections. Government too good as
well as too bad may have a baneful influence on men.
The purpose of self-government is to intensify individual
responsibility, to promote attempts at wisdom, through
which true wisdom may come at last. The republic is a
huge laboratory of civics, a laboratory in which strange
experiments are performed, but in which, as in other
laboratories, wisdom may arise from experience, and once
arisen may work itself out into virtue.

It is not true that the government " which is best ad-
ministered is best." That is the maxim of tyranny.
That government is best which makes the best men. In
the training of manhood lies the certain pledge of bet-
ter government in the future. The civic problems of
the future will be greater than those of the past. They

34 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

will concern not the relations of nation to nation, but of
man to man. The policing of far-off islands, the herd-
ing of baboons and elephants, the maintenance of the
machinery of imperialism are petty things beside the
duties which the higher freedom demands. To turn
to these empty and showy affairs, is to neglect our own
business for the gossip of our neighbors. Such work may
be a matter of necessity ; it should not be a source of
pride. The political greatness of England has never
lain in her navies nor the force of her arms. It has lain
in her struggles for individual freedom. Not Marl-
borough nor Nelson nor Wellington is its exponent.
Let us say rather Pym and Hampden, and Gladstone
and Bright. The real problems of England have always
been at home. The pomp of imperialism, the display
of naval power, the commercial control of India and
China, — all these are as the " bread and circuses " by
which the Roman emperors held the mob from their
thrones. They keep the people busy and put off the
day of final reckoning. "Gild the dome of the In-
valides," was Napoleon's cynical command, when he
learned that the people of Paris were becoming des-
perate.

The people of England seek blindly for a higher jus-
tice, a loftier freedom, and so the ruling ministry crowns
the good queen as " Empress of India." Meanwhile,
the real problems of civilization develop and ripen.
They care nothing for the greatness of empire nor the
glitter of imperiaUsm. They must be solved by men,
and each man must help solve his own problems. The
development of republican manhood is just now the
most important matter that any nation in the world has

," LEST WE FORGET." 35

on hand. We have been fairly successful thus far, but
perhaps only fairly. Our government is careless, waste-
ful and unjust, but our men are growing self-contained
and wise. Despite the annual invasion of foreign illit-
eracy, despite the degeneration of congested cities, the
individual intelligence of men stands higher in America
than any other part of the world. The bearing of the
people at large in these days is a lesson in itself. Com-
pare the behavior of the American people, in this and
other trying times, with that of the masses of any
other nation, and we see what democracy has done.
And we shall see more of this as our history goes on.
Free schools, free ballot, free thought, free religion — all
tend to enforce self-reliance, self-respect, and the sense
of duty, which are the surest foundation of national great-
ness.

An active foreign policy would slowly change much of ]
this. The nation which deals with war and diplomacy
must be quick to act and quick to change. It must,
like the Oregon, be able to reverse itself within its own
length. To this end, good government is a necessity,
whether it be seK-government or not. Democracy
yields before diplomacy. . Republicanism steps aside
when war is declared. " An army," said Wellington,
" can get along under a poor general. It can do noth-
ing under a debating society." In war the strongest
man must lead, and military discipline is the only train-
ing for an army. In a militant nation the same rules
hold in peace as in war. We cannot try civic experi-
ments with a foe at our gates. A foe is always at the
gates of a nation with a vigorous foreign policy. Experi-
ments such as we freely try would wreck the British Em-

36 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

pire. For one of England's great parties to propose a radi-
cal change like that of the free coinage of silver would
jproduce a panic like that of the swallowing of London by
an earthquake. The British nation is hated and feared
of all nations except our own, and we love her only in
our lucid intervals. Only her eternal vigilance keeps
the vultures from her coasts. Eternal vigilance of this
sort will strengthen governments, will build up nations ;
it will not in like degree make men. The day of the
nations as nations is passing. National ambitions, national
hopes, national aggrandizement — all these may become
public nuisances. Imperialism, like feudalism, belongs
to the past. The men of the world as men, not as na-
tions, are drawing closer and closer together. The needs
of commerce are stronger than the will of nations, and
the final guarantee of peace and good will among men
will be not " the parliament of nations," but the self-con-
trol of men.

But whatever the outcome of the present war, what-
ever the fateful twentieth century may bring, the primal
duty of Americans is never to forget that men are more
than nations ; that wisdom is more than glory, and vir-
tue more than dominion of the sea. The kingdom of
God is within us. The nation exists for its men, never
the men for the nation. " The only government that
I recognize," said Thoreau, " and it matters not how few
are at the head of it or how small its army, is the power
that establishes justice in the land, never that which
establishes injustice." And the will of free men to be
just one toward another, is our best guarantee that " gov-
ernment of the people, for the people, and by the people,
shall not perish from the earth."

"LEST WE FORGET." 37

" God of our fathers, known of old —
Lord of our far-flung battle line —

Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine —

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget — lest we forget.

" The tumult and the shouting dies —

The captains and the kings depart —
Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget I

" Far-called our navies melt away —

On dune and headland sinks the fire—

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh and Tyre I

Judge of the nations spare us yet.

Lest we forget — ^lest we forget I "

II.

COLONIAL EXPANSION.

11.

COLONIAL EXPANSION.*

Last May I spoke before my people at home on the
subject of Imperialism. I took my title, as I take now
my text, from Kipling's " Recessional," the noblest hymn
of our century : " Lest we forget." For it seemed to me
then, just after the battle of Manila, that we might forget
who we are and for what we stand. In the sudden intoxi-
cation of far-ofif victory, with the consciousness of power
and courage, with the feeling that all the world is talking
of us, our great stem mother patting us on the back, and
all the lesser peoples looking on in fear or envy, we
might lose our heads. But greater glory than this has
been ours before. For more than a century our nation
has stood for something higher and nobler than success
in war, something not enhanced by a victory at sea, or a
wild bold charge over a hill lined with masked batteries.
We have stood for civic ideals, and the greatest of these,
that government should make men by giving them free-
dom to make themselves. The glory of the American

* Address before the Congress of Religions at Omaha in
October, 1898, published in the " New World " for December,
1898, under the title of " Imperial Democracy."

41

42 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

Republic is that it is the embodiment of American man-
hood. It was the dream of the fathers that this should
always be so, — that American government and republican
manhood should be co-extensive, that the nation shaU
not go where freedom cannot go.

This is the meaning of Washington's Farewell Address :
that America should grow strong within herself, should
keep out of all fights and friendships that are not her
own, should secure no territory in which a free man
cannot live, and should own no possessions that may not
in time be numbered among the United States. In other
words, America should not be a power among the nations,
but a nation among the powers. This view of the func-
tion our country rests on is no mere accident of revolu-
tion or isolation. It has its base in sound political com-
mon-sense, and in the rush of new claims and new pos-
sibilities we should not forget this old wisdom.

This year 1898 makes one of the three world-crises in
our history. Twice before have we stood at the parting
of the ways. Twice before have wise counsels controlled
our decision. The first crisis followed the war of the
Revolution. Its question was this. What relation shall
the weak, scattered colonies of varying tempers and
various ambitions bear to one another? The answer
was^ the American Constitution, the federation of self-
governing United States.

The second crisis came through the growth of slavery.
The union of the States, we found, could not "per-
manently endure half slave, half free." These were the
words of Lincoln at Springfield in 1858, — the words that
made Douglass Senator from Illinois, that made Lincoln
the first President of the re-united States. These are the

COLONIAL EXPANSION. 43

words which, fifty years ago, drove the timid away in
fear, that rallied the strong to brave deeds in face of a
great crisis. And this was our decision : Slavery must
die that the Union shall live.

The third crisis is on us to-day. It is not the con-
quest of Spain, not the disposition of the spoils of vic-
tory which first concerns us. It is the spirit that lies
behind it. Shall our armies go where our institutions
cannot? Shall territorial expansion take the place of
Democratic freedom? Shall our invasion of the Orient
be merely an incident, an accident of a war of knight-
errantry, temporary and exceptional? Or is it to mark
a new policy, the reversion from America to Europe,
from Democracy to Imperialism ?

It is my own belief that the crisis is already passing.
Our choice for the future is made. We have already
lost our stomach for Imperialism, as we come to see
what it means. A century of republicanism has given the
common man common sense, and the tawdry glories of
foreign dominion already cease to dazzle and deceive.
But the responsibilities of our acts are upon us. Hawaii
and Alaska are ours already. Cuba and Porto Rico we
cannot escape, and, most unfortunate of all, the most of
us see no clear way to justice toward the Philippines.
The insistent duties of "Compulsory Imperialism"
already clamor for our attention.

In the face of these tremendous problems, the nation
should at least be serious. It is not enough to swell our
breasts over the glories of national expansion, roll up our
eyes, and prate about the guiding finger of Providence,
while the black swarm of our political vultures swoop
down on our new possessions. To the end that we may

44 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

understand the serious work of " Compulsory Imperial-
ism," let us look briefly at a number of easy propositions
or axioms of political science, pertinent, each in its
degree, to the topic before us.

Colonial expansion is not national growth. By the

! spirit of our Constitution our Nation can expand only
with the growth of freedom. It is composed not of land
'but of men. It is a self-governing people, gathered in

iselfrgoveming United States. There is no objection to

; national expansion where honorably brought about. If
there were any more space to be occupied by American
citizens, who could take care of themselves, we would

f cheerfully overflow and fill it. But Colonial Aggrandize-
, ment is not national expansion; slaves are not men.
AVherever degenerate, dependent or alien races are
within our borders to-day, they are not part of the
United States. They constitute a social problem; a
menace to peace and welfare. There is no solution of
race problem or class problem, until race or class can
solve it for itself. Unless the Negro can make a man of
himself through the agencies of frepdom, free ballot, free
schools, free religions, there can be no solutions of the
race problem. Already Booker Washington warns us
that this problem unsettled is a national danger greater
than the attack of armies within or without. The race
problems of the tropics are perennial and insoluble, for
free institutions cannot exist where free men cannot
live.

The territorial expansion now contemplated would not
extend our institutions, because the proposed colonies
are incapable of civilized self-government. It would not
extend our nation, because these regions are already full

COLONIAL EXPANSION. 45

of alien races, and not habitable by Anglo-Saxon people.
The strength of Anglo-Saxon civilization lies in the mental
and physical activity of men and in the growth of the
home. Where activity is fatal to life, the Anglo-Saxon
decays, mentally, morally, physically. The home cannot
endure in the climate of the tropics. Mr. Ingersoll once
said that if a colony of New England preachers and
Yankee schoolma'ams were established in the West
Indies, the third generation would be seen riding bare-
back on Sunday to the cock-fights. Civilization is, as it
were, suffocated in the tropics. It lives, as Benjamin
Kidd suggests, as though under deficiency of oxygen.
The only American who can live in the tropics without
demoralization is the one who has duties at home and
is not likely to go there.

The advances of civilization are wholly repugnant to
the children of the tropics. To live without care, reck-
less and dirty, to have no duties and to be in no hurry,
with the lottery, cock-fight and games of chance for ex-
citement, is more to them than rapid transit, telegraphic
communication, literature, art, education, and all the
joys of Saxon civilization. The Latin republics fail for
reasons inherent in the nature of the people. There is
little civic coherence among them ; feelings are mistaken
for realities, words for deeds, and boasting for accomplish-
ment. Hence great words, lofty sentiments, fuss and
feathers generally take the place of action.

We are pledged to give self-government to Cuba.
This we cannot do in full without the risk of seeing it
relapse into an anarchy as repulsive, if not as hopeless,
as the tyranny of Spain. Only the splendid apparition
of the man on horseback could bring this to an end.

46 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

The dictator may bring Law, but not democracy. Its
ultimate fate and ours is Annexation. It is too near us
and our interests for us to leave it to its fate, and to
the schemes of its own politicians. It therefore remains
for us to annex and assimilate Cuba, but not at once.
We must take our time, and do it in decency and order,
as we have taken Alaska and Hawaii. We take Cuba,
Porto Rico and Hawaii, not because we want them, but
because we have no friends who can manage them well
and give us no trouble, and it is possible that in a
century or so they may become part of our nation as
well as of our territory.

The Anglo-Saxon nations have certain ideals on which
their political superstructure rests. The great political
service of England is to teach respect for law. The
British Empire rests on British law. The great political
service of the United States is to teach respect for the
individual man. The American republic rests on in-
dividual manhood. The chief agency in the develop-
ment of free manhood is the recognition of the individual
man as the responsible unit of government. This recog-
nition is not confined to local and municipal affairs, as
is practically the case in England, but extends to all
branches of government.

It is the axiom of democracy that " government must
derive its just powers from the consent of the governed."
No such consent justifies slavery; hence our Union
" could not endure half slave, half free." No such con-
sent justifies our hold on Alaska, Hawaii, Cuba, Porto
Rico, the Ladrones or the Philippines. The people do
not want us, our ways, our business, or our government.
Only as we displace them or amuse them with cheap

COLONIAL EXPANSION. 47

shows do we gain their consent. These are slave nations,
and their inhabitants cannot be units in government. In
our hands, as Judge Morrow has pointed out in a recent
decision, they will have no voice in their own affairs, but
must be subject to the sovereign will of Congress alone.
This implies taxation without representation, a matter
of which something was said in Boston one hundred
and thirty years ago. Our Constitution knows no such
thing as permanently dependent colonies, else the ac-
quisition of such would have been formally forbidden.

To be subject to the will of Congress, as the history of
Alaska has clearly shown, is to be subject to vacillation,
corruption, tyranny, parsimony and neglect. The great-
est scandals England has known have come from her
neglected colonies. It is not that Americans or Eng-
lishmen are incompetent to handle any class of problems.
It is because the public weary of them ; colonial affairs
are trivial, paltry and exasperating. When a colony
ceases to be a new toy, it falls into neglect. The record
of American occupation of our one colony of Alaska is
the same in kind (climate and blood excepted) with that
of Spanish rule in Cuba or the Ladrones. We are Wind
to this because we do not care. Alaska is none of our
business ; we have no money invested in it. In a few
years Alaska will have no resources left ; then we may
throw it away as we would throw a sucked orange. The
American-Spanish idea of a colony is a place to be ex-
ploited, to make its captors rich by its resources and its
trade. We have cured Spain of that idea, by taking all
her colonies away. But we have not attained to the idea
that we must spend our money on our colonies, enrich-
ing them with enterprise and law.

48 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

It is said nowadays that wherever our flag is raised it
must never be hauled down. To haul down an American
flag is an insult to Old Glory. But this patriotism rings
counterfeit. It would touch a truer note to say that
wherever our flag goes it shall bring good government.
It should, as Senator Mason suggests, " never float over
an unwilling people." Whatever land comes under the
American flag should have the best government we know
how to give. It should be better than we give ourselves,
for it lacks the noble advantages of self-rule.

Take the Philippines or leave them ! No half-way
measures can be permanent. To rule at arm's length
is to fail in government. These islands must belong to
the United States, or else they must belong to the people
who inhabit them. If we govern the Philippines, so in
their degree must the Philippines govern us.

There are some economists who intelligently favor
colonial extension to-day because to handle colonies suc-
cessfully must force on us English forms of government.
A dose of Imperialism would stiffen the back of our
Democracy. English forms are better than ours in this,
that they can deal more accurately with outside affairs.
This is because the people of England are never con-
sulted by the foreign office, the colonial office or the
Bureau controlling coinage and finance. To remove
these matters from popular control makes for good
government at the expense of training of the people.
As to which is the better there is room for honest differ-
ence of opinion. The essence of this argument is that
pressure from without will force us to take all difficult
matters out of the people's hands, intrusting them only
to trained representatives. It is true, no doubt, that

COLONIAL EXPANSION. 49

our standing in the world is lowered because our best
statesmen are not in politics to the degree that they are
in England. The rules of the game shut them out.
But I believe that we can change these rules by forces
now at work. Wiser voters will demand better repre-
sentatives, but these must keep in touch with the people,
acting with them and through them, never in their stead.
For reasons I shall give later on, I believe that to adopt (
British forms, with all their unquestioned advantages, |
would be a step backward and downward.

Leaving political philosophers aside, the noisiest
advocates of colonial expansion are among men least
interested in good government at home. Chief among
these are ministers, ignorant of the difiSculties of wise
administration, and politicians contetnptuous of them.
If it were not for the petty offices which the Philippines
promise, half the political impulse in favor of their
annexation would evaporate. Half the rest comes from
the desire to dodge the issues of labor and coinage by
setting people to talking of something else.

There are two parties in every free country, and only
two. These are, first, those who strive for good govern-
ment, and second, those who hope to gain something —
money, glory, prestige — from bad government. These
two parties are not called republican or democrat, not
whig or tory. They do not present separate tickets —
the first party never presents tickets at all. It is always
in the minority, but it is the glory and the hope of
the democracy that it always comes out victorious after
the election is over.

The chief real argument for the retention of the Phil-
ippines rests on the belief that if we do not take them.

50 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

they will fall into worse hands. This may be true, but
it is open to question. It is easy to treat them as Spain
has done; but none of the eloquent voices raised for
annexation have yet suggested anything better. We must
also recognize that the nerve and courage of Dewey and
his associates seem spent to little avail if we cast away
what we have won. To leave the Philippines, after all
this, seems like patriotism under false pretenses. But
nothing could have induced us to accept these islands,
if offered for nothing, before the battle of Manila. If
we take the Philippines, the business of bringing peace
through war is scarce begun. The great majority of the
Filipinos have never yet heard of Spain, much less of
the United States. This is especially true of the Malay
pirates of the Southern Islands and the black negritos
of the unexplored interior. It would not be an easy and
humane task to bring these folk to the extermination
which some of the annexationists placidly claim is the
final doom of negritos, Kanaka, Malays and all inferior
races who get in anybody's way.

This, according to John Morley,* is England's ex-
perience in bringing peace to suffering humanity in the
tropics : " First, you push on into territories where you
have no business to be, and where you had promised not
to go ; secondly, your intrusion provokes resentment,
and, in these wild countries, resentment means resist-
ance ; thirdly, you instantly cry out that the people are
rebellious and that their act is rebellion (this in spite of
your own assurance that you have no intention of set-
ting up a permanent sovereignty over them) ; fourthly,
you send a force to stamp out the rebellion ; and fifthly,
* As quoted in the New York Nation,

COLONIAL EXPANSION. 5 1

having spread bloodshed, confusion and anarchy, you
declare, with hands uplifted to the heavens, that moral
reasons force you to stay, for if you were to leave, this
territory would be left in a condition which no civilized
power could contemplate with equanimity or with com-
posure. These are the five stages in the Forward Rake's
progress." It was of England in Chitral that Morley said
this, not of America in Luzon. No wonder England
now cheers us on. We are following her lead. We are
giving to her methods the sanction of our respecta-
bility.

There are many who say, "Take whatever we can
get. Who is afraid ? What is there for the strongest,
richest, bravest, wisest nation on earth to fear ? " But
it is not force we fear. Armies, navies, kings and Kai-
sers, so long as we behave ourselves, can never harm our
republic. It is bad government we fear, the dry rot of
official mismanagement, corruption and neglect, the de-
cay which the Fates mete out " when the tumult and the
shouting dies " to the nations that forget their ideals.
To come to "our place among the nations" will be to
show that democracy can give good government, govern-
ment firm, dignified, economical, just. It does not mean
to have everybody talking about us, to carry our flag into
every sea and to spread rank imbecility over a hundred
scattered islands.

So far as the Philippines are concerned, the only
righteous thing to do would be to recognize the inde-
pendence of the Philippines under American protection,
and to lend them our army and navy and our wisest
counselors, not our politicians, but our jurists, our teach-
ers, with foresters, electricians, manufacturers, mining

52 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

' experts, and experts in the various industries. We should
not get our money back, but we should save our
honor.

The only sensible thing to do would be to pull out
some dark night and escape from the great problem of
the Orient as suddenly and as dramatically as we got
into it.

To take a weak nation by the throat is not the righteous
way to win its trade. It is not true that " trade follows
the flag." Trade flies through the open door. To
open the door of the Orient is to open our own doors
to Asia. To do this hurries us on toward the final
" manifest destiny," the leveling of the nations. Where
the barriers are all broken down, and the world becomes
one vast commercial republic, there will be leveling
down of government, character, ideals, as well as level-
ing up.

It is the duty of nations with ideals to struggle
against " manifest destiny." In the Norse Mythology
the Fenris-Wolf in the Twilight of the Gods shall at last
devour them all. So at last in the Twilight of the
Nations shall all of them succumb to " Manifest Des-
tiny." The huge armaments of Europe, its invincible
armies, its mighty navies, are but piled up as fagots for
the burning which shall destroy dynasties and nations.
Lowering of national character, of national ideals, of
national pride, follows the path of glory.

" We want," some say, " our hands in oriental affairs
when the great struggle follows the breaking up of
China." Others would have " American freedom upheld
as a torchlight amidst the darkness of oriental despot-
ism." We cannot show American civilization where

COLONIAL EXPANSION. 53

American institutions cannot exist. But the spirit of
freedom goes with its deeds.

I do not urge the money cost of holding the Philip-
pines as an argument against annexation. No depend- 1
ent colony, honestly administered, ever repaid its cost
to the government, and this colony holds out not the I
slightest promise of such a result. In fact, the cost of con-
quest and maintenance in life and gold is in grotesque
excess of any possible advantage to trade or to civilization.

Individuals grow rich, but no honest government gets ?
' its money back. But with all this, if annexation is a
duty, it is such regardless of cost.

But America has governmental ideals of the develop-
ment of the individual man. England has no care for
the man, only for civic order. This unfits America for
certain tasks for which England is prepared. In Zanzi-
bar, when the king dies, the first of the royal family to
reach the throne is made king. Once a king who hated
England was thus chosen. A British man-of-war in the
harbor promptly shelled the royal palace and killed so
many followers of the new king that the mistake was
quickly rectified and the Pax Briiannica restored. Our
ideals stand in the way of our doing such things as this.

To govern colonies it is necessary to have an auto- 1
matic non-political civil service. That our navy is '
organized on such a basis makes its strength. That the
volunteer army is not, is the reason why the air is full
to-day of charges and counter charges. The colonial (
policy must be continuous, hence out of the people's
hands. It must be flexible, hence not limited by con- )
stitutional checks and balances. An annexationist
lately said to me, " I am just tired of hearing of the

54 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

Constitution." A labor agitator says that all our trou-
bles come from the fact " every reform needed by the
people is prevented by the Constitution." But to pre-
vent foolish acts, inside and outside the country, the
Constitution was devised.

j Government derives its " just powers from the consent
jof the governed." This is the foundation of democracy.
But where such consent is impossible, government may
derive powers in another way. It may justify itself be-
cause it is good government. This is the maxim of
Imperialism. This is the justification of Mexico. It is
the justification of Great Britain. The function of
British Imperialism is to carry law and order, the Pax
Britannica, to all parts of the globe. This function has
been worked out in three ways corresponding to Eng-
land's three classes of tributary districts or colonies.
The first class of these consists of regions settled by Eng-
lishmen imbued with the spirit of the law, and capable
of taking care of themselves. Such colonies rule their
own affairs absolutely. The bond of Imperialism is little
more than a treaty of perpetual friendship. Over the
local affairs of Canada, for example, England claims little
authority and exercises none. When difficulties arise
with Canada, we see British Imperialism cringing be-
fore provincial politicians as a weak mother before a
spoiled child. Should Canada or Australia break from
her nominal allegiance, the whole sham fabric of Im-
perialism would fall to pieces.

A second class of colonies consists of military posts,
strategic points of war or commerce, wrested from some
weaker nation in the militant past. In the control of
these outposts " the consent of the governed " plays no

COLONIAL EXPANSION. 55

part. The inhabitants of Gibraltar, for example, count
for no more than so many "camp-followers." They
remain through military suffrance, and the forms of
martial law suffice for all the government they need.

The third class of colonies is made up of conquered
or bankrupt nations, people whose own governmental
forms were so intolerable that England was forced to
take them across her knee. These nations stiU govern
themselves in one fashion, but each act of their rulers is
subject to the firm veto of the British Colonial Office.
"Said England unto Pharaoh, 'I will make a man of
you,' " and with Pharaoh, as with other irresponsibles of
the tropics, England has in some degree succeeded.
But this success is attained only through the strictest
discipline of military methods. It is not along the lines
by which we have made a man of " Brother Jonathan."
England has thus become the guardian of the weak
nations of the earth, the police force of the unruly, the
assignee of the bankrupt.

Gk)od government is the justification for British im-
perialism. If victories at sea, the needs of humanity,
"manifest destiny," and political dalliance with fate
force foreign dominion on the United States, American
imperialism must have the same justification. What-
ever lands or people come under our flag are entitled
to good government, the best that we can give them.
This should be better than we give ourselves, for it is not
accompanied by the inestimable advantages of self-
government. There are duties as well as glories inherent
in dominion, and the duties are by far the more insistent.
We have had our own set of problems as important as

those of England and more difficult. It is easier to
5

$6 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

govern others by force than to rule ourselves by intelli-
gence.

Though one in blood vfith England, our course of
political activities has not lain parallel with hers. While
England has been making trade we have been making
men. We have no machinery to govern colonies well.
We want no such machinery if we can help it. The habit
of our people and the tendency of our forms of govern-
ment are to lead people to mind their own business.
Only the business of individuals or groups of individuals
receives attention. Our representatives in Congress are
our attorneys, retained to look after our interests, the in-
terest of the state or district, not of the nation. A colony
has no attorney, and its demands, as matters now stand,
must go by default. This is the reason why we fail in the
government of colonies. This is the reason why our con-
sular service is weak and inefficient. This is the reason
why our forests are wasted year by year. Nothing is well
done in a republic unless it touches the interest or catches
the attention of the people. Unless a colony knows what
good government is and insists loudly on having it, with
some means to make itself heard, it will be neglected
and abused. This is why every body of people under
the American flag must have a share in the American
government. When a colony knows what good govern-
ment is, it ceases to be a colony and can take care of
itself.

The question is not whether Great Britain or the
United States has the better form of government or the
nobler civic mission. There is room in the world for
two types of Anglo-Saxon nations, and nothing has yet
happened to show that civilization would gain if either

COLONIAL EXPANSION. 57

were to take up the function of the other. We may
not belittle the tremendous services of England in the
enforcement of laws amid barbarism. We may not deny
that every aggression of hers on weaker nations results
in some good to the conquered, but we insist that our
own function of turning masses into men, of " knowing
men by name," is as noble as hers. Better for the world
that the whole British Empire should be dissolved, as it 1
must be late or soon, than that the United States should 1
forget her own mission in a mad chase of emulation.
He reads history to little purpose who finds in imperial
dominion a result, a cause or even a sign of national
greatness.

It is not true that England's escape from political \
corruption is due to the growth of her imperial power.
It is due to the growth of individual intelligence, the
spread of the spirit of democracy. To this development
ImperiaUsm has been a hindrance only. Sooner or
later Imperialism must be abandoned by England.
The subject peoples must share with England the cost
and the responsibility of rule else the mother country
will be crushed under its burdens. Sooner or later, says
a recent writer :

" England must take all her colonies into political copartner-
ship (of taxation and of responsibility) or else abandon them, or
in the end be crushed by the burden of their care."

We may have a navy and coaling stations to meet our
commercial needs without entering on colonial expansion.
It takes no war to accomplish this honorably. What-
ever land we may need in our business we may buy in
the open market as we buy coal. If the owners will

58 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

accept our price it needs no Imperialism to foot the
bills. But the question of such need is one for com-
mercial experts, not for politicians. Our decision should
be in the interest of commerce, not of sea power. We
need, no doubt, navy enough to protect us from insults,
even though every battleship, Charles Sumner pointed
out fifty years ago, costs as much as Harvard College,
and though schools, not battleships, make the strength
of the United States. We have drawn more strength
from Harvard College than from a thousand men-of-war.
Once Spain owned some battleships, as many and as swift
as ours, but she had no men of science to handle them.
A British fleet bottled up at Santiago or Cavite would
have given a very different account of itself. It is men
not ships which make a navy. It is our moral and
material force, our brains and character and ingenuity
and wealth that make America a power among the
nations, not her battleships. These are only visible
symptoms designed to impress the ignorant or incredu-
lous. The display of force saves us from insults — ^from
those who do not know our mettle.

Men say that we want nobler political problems than
those we have. We are tired of our tasks " artificial and
transient," " insufferably parochial," and seek some new
ones worthy of our national bigness. I have no patience
with such talk as this. The greatest political problems
the world has ever known are ours to-day and still un-
solved, — the problems of free men in freedom. Be-
cause these are hard and trying we would shirk them in
order to meddle with the affairs of our weak-minded
neighbors. So we are tired of the labor problem, the
corporation problem, the race problem, the problem of

COLONIAL EXPANSION. 59

coinage, of municipal government and the greatest pro-
blem of all, that of the oppression of the individual man
by the social combinations to which he belongs, by those
to which he does not belong, and by the corporate power
of society which may become the greatest tyrant of all.
Then let us turn to the politics of Guam and Mindanao,
and let our own difficulties settle themselves ! Shame
on our cowardice ! Are the politics of Luzon cleaner
than those of New York? We would give our blood to
our country, would we not? Then let us give her our
brains. More than the blood of heroes she needs the
intelligence of men.

III.

A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY.

And unregretful, threw us all away
To flaunt it in a Blind Man's Holiday."

Lowell.

III.

A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY.*

I wish to maintain a single proposition. We should
withdraw from the Philippine Islands as soon as in dig-
nity we can. It is bad statesmanship to make these alien
people our partners ; it is a crime to make them our
slaves. If we hold their lands there is no middle course.
Only a moral question brings a crisis to man or nation.
In the presence of a crisis, only righteousness is right
and only justice is safe.

I ask you to consider with me three questions of the
hour. Why do we want the Philippines? What can we
do with them ? What will they do to us ?

These questions demand serious consideration, not
one at a lime but all together. We should know clearly
our final intentions as a nation, for it is never easy to re-
trace false steps. We have made too many of these al-
ready. It is time for us to grow serious. Even the
most headlong of our people admit that we stand in the
presence of a real crisis, while, so far as we can see,
there is no hand at the helm. But the problem is vir-

* Read before the Graduate Club of Leiand Stanford Junior
University, Feb. 14, 1899 : and afterwards (April 3) published for
the Club by the courtesy of Mr. John J. Valentine.

63

64 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

I tually solved when we know what our trae interests are.
Half the energy we have spent in getting into trouble
will take us honorably out of it. Once convinced that
we do not want the Philippines it will be easy to aban-
don them with honor. If we are to take them we can-
not get at it too soon. The difficulty is that we do not
yet know what we want, and we are afraid that if we
once let these people go we shall never catch them
again. With our longings after Imperialism we have not
had the nerve to act.

Let us glance for a moment at the actual condition of
affairs. By the fortunes of war the capital of the Philip-
pine Islands fell, last May, into the hands of our navy.
The city of Manila we have held, and by dint of bulldog
diplomacy our final treaty of peace has assigned to us the
four hundred or fourteen hundred islands of the whole
archipelago. To these we have as yet no real title. We
can get none till the actual owners have been consulted.
We have a legal title, of course, but no moral title and no
actual possession. We have only purchased Spain's quit-
claim deed to property she could not hold, and which she
cannot transfer. For the right to finish the conquest of
the Philippines and to close out the insurrection which
has gone on for almost a century we have agreed, on our
part, to pay ^20,000,000 in cash, for the people of the
Islands and the land on which they were born, and
which, in their fashion, they have cultivated. This is a
sum absurdly large, if we consider only the use we are
likely to make of the region and the probable cost of
its reconquest and rule. It seems criminally small if we
consider the possible returns to us or to Spain from ped-
dling out the islands as old junk in the open market, or

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 6$

from leasing them to commercial companies competent
to exploit them to their utmost. The price is high when
we remember that the United States for a century has
felt absolutely no need for such property and would not
have taken any of it, or all of it, or any other like pro-
perty as a gift. The price is high, too, when we ob-
serve that the failure of Spain placed the islands not in
our hands but in the hands of their own people, a third
party, whose interest we, like Spain, have as yet failed to
consider. Emilio Aguinaldo, the liberator of the Fili-
pinos, the "Washington of the Orient," is the de facto
ruler of most of Luzon. In our hands is the city of
Manila, and not much else, and we cannot extend our
power except by bribery or by force. We may pervert
these fragile patriots as Spain claims to have done ; or,
like Spain, we may redden the swamps of Luzon with
their rebellious blood.

"Who are these Americans?" Aguinaldo is reported
to ask, " these people who talk so much of freedom and
justice and the rights of man, who crowd into our islands
and who stand as the Spaniards did between us and our
liberties?"

What right have we indeed ? The right of purchase
from Spain. We held Spain by the throat and she could
not choose but sell.

If, at the close of our Revolutionary War, the King of
France, coming in at the eleventh hour and driving the
English from our capital, had bought a quit-claim deed to
the colonies, proposing to retain them in the interest of
French commerce, he would have held exactly the posi-
tion in which our administration has placed the United
States-

66 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

In that case George Washington would have insisted,
as Aguinaldo has done, that only the people who own it
have any sovereignty to sell. He would have held his
people's land against all comers, not the least against his
late allies. He might even have led a hope as foolish
and forlorn as that which inspired the late pitiful attack
upon our forces at Manila, if, indeed, there was such an
attack, for there is not the slightest evidence that hos-
tilities were begun by Aguinaldo.

The blood shed at Manila will rest heavy on those the
people hold responsible for it. There is not the slight-
est doubt where this responsibility rests. A little court-
esy, a little tact, on the part of those in power, would
have spared us from it all. These men have not led a
forlorn fight against Spain for all these years to be tamely
snubbed and shoved aside as dogs or rebels at the end.
If the President had assured Aguinaldo that his people
would not be absorbed against their will, there would
have been peace at Manila. If he had assured the
people of the United States that no vassal lands would
be annexed against their will, there would be peace at
Washington. The President has no right to assume in
speech or in act that the United States proposes to
prove false to her own pledges or false to her own his-
tory. Unlike the fighting editor, he is sworn to uphold
the Constitution.

If we may trust the record, Aguinaldo became our ally
in good faith, in the belief that we were working with
him for the freedom of his people. In good faith our
consuls made him promises we have never repudiated,
but which, after six months of silence, by the casting vote
of our Vice-President, we refuse to make good. These

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 6/

promises were in line with our pledges to Cuba. The
consuls, like Aguinaldo, supposed that we meant what
we said. When we pledged ourselves to give up the
prisoners he had taken we acknowledged him as our
ally ; and our threats to arrest him, for holding his
prisoners, as shown in the published correspondence
brought on the present wanton bloodshed. In any
case, we should have lost nothing through courteous
treatment, and our dignity as a nation would not have
suffered even though a civil hearing had been given to
his envoy, Agoncillo. It may be that Agoncillo is a
coward as our newspapers picture him, but that should
not make him lonesome in Washington.

We know nothing of Philippine matters, save through
cablegrams passed through government censorship, and
from the letters and speech of men of the army and navy.
The letters and cablegrams do not always tell the same
story. It is certain, however, that General Otis has been
promoted for gallantry at the slaughter of the fifth of
February and in the subsequent skirmishes which have
left 20,000 natives homeless. This is right, if he acted
under orders, for a soldier must obey. If he acted on his
own motion, he should have been cashiered. He should
neither have provoked nor permitted a conflict if any
leniency or diplomacy could have prevented it. Even
taking the most selfish view possible as to our plans, their
success must depend on our retention of the respect and
good will of the subject people.

If the Filipinos are our subjects, they have the right
to be heard before condemnation. If they are our allies,
they have the right to be heard before repudiation.
Their rights are older than ours. It was their struggle

68 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

for freedom before most of our people had even heard
of their existence. We may treat these matters as we
will, but, in the light of history, we shall appear with the
tyrant and the coward, and our act be the fit conclusion
of the " century of dishonor." " The wreck of broken
promises," says General Miles, referring to our Indian
treaties, " is strewn across the United States from the
Atlantic to the Pacific." We have broken the record
now for we have extended it to the Orient. " Why is
it," a friend once asked General Crooks, " that you have
such influence with, the Indians ? " " Because I always
keep my word," was the reply.

To be sure Aguinaldo may not be much of a Wash-
ington, a Washington of the hen-roost type, perhaps, as
the brigand patriots of Spanish colonies have been in
the past. As to this we have not much right to speak.
We have never heard his side of the case, and we have
listened only to Spanish testimony. It is worthy of note
that our returned officers from Manila, who are men com-
petent to judge, speak of him in terms of the highest
respect. His government, which we try to destroy, is
the most capable, enlightened and just these islands
have ever known. These germs of civic liberty constitute
the most precious product of the Philippines. But what-
ever his character or motives, he has one great advant-
age which Washington possessed — he is in the right.
By that fact he is changed from an adventurer, a soldier
of fortune, into a hero, an instrument of destiny. If
Aguinaldo betrays his people by selling out to us, the
heroism of the people remains. When men die for in-
dependence there is somewhere a hero. Self-sacrifice
for an idea means some fitness for self-government.

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 69

Whatever we may choose to do Aguinaldo is a factor,
and our sovereignty over his islands must be gained
through peaceful concession, if it is gained at all. We
could crush Aguinaldo easily enough, but we dare not.
" Instans tyrannus ! " However feeble he may be while
we run our fires around " his creep-hole " he has only to
" clutch at God's skirts," as in Browning's poem, and it
is we who are afraid. This great, strong, lusty nation is
too brave to do a cowardly deed.* In spite of the orgies
of our newspapers, we are still bothered by a national
conscience. We do not like to fight in foreign lands
against women with cropped hair defending their own
homes ; against naked savages with bows and arrows,
nor in battles likened to a Colorado rabbit drive.

The Filipinos are not rebels against law and order, but
against alien control. As a republic under our protec-
tion, or without it, I am informed, they stood apparently
ready to give us any guarantee we might ask as to order
and security.

We may easily destroy the organized army of the
Filipinos, but that does not bring peace. In the cliif s and
jungles they will defy us for a century as they have defied
Spain. According to Dewey, the Filipinos are " fighters
from away back." These four words from Dewey mean
more than forty would from an ordinary warrior. In
Sumatra it has cost the Dutch upwards of 300,000 men
to subdue Achin, a peninsula with a total population es-
timated at 328,000, and its native chieftains are still
defiant. Three hundred thousand men, of whom two-

* I let this stand as originally written. While we have carried
on relentless war in Luzon neither the American people nor their
congress have been consulted in regard to it.

70 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

thirds rotted in the swamps, never seeing a foe or a
battle. Our people are ashamed of shame, and their eyes
once opened they cannot be coaxed nor driven.

Let us consider the first of our propositions. Why
do we want the Philippines? To this I can give no
answer of my own. I can see not one valid reason why
we should want them, nor any why they should want us,
except as strong and friendly advisers. As vassals of the
United States they have no future before them ; as citizens
they have no hope. But even if we could by kind pater-
nalism make their lives happier or more effective, I am
sure that we will not. Our philanthropy is less than skin
deep. The syndicates waiting to exploit the islands,
and incidentally to rob their own stockholders, are not
interested in the moral uplifting of negroes and " dagoes."
On the other hand I am sure that their possession can
in no wise help us, not even financially or commercially.

The movement for colonial extension rests on two
things: Persistent forgetfulness of the principles of
democratic government on the one hand; hopeless
ignorance of the nature of the tropics and its people on
the other.

But while I give no reason of my own, I have listened
carefully to the speech of others, and the voices I have
heard are legion. Their opinions I shall try in a way to
classify, with a word of comment on each. And, first, I
place those which claim some sort of moral validity,
though I acknowledge no basis for such claim. For the
only morality a nation can know is justice. To be fair
as between man and man, to look after mutual interests
and to do those necessary things out of reach of the indiv-
idual is the legitimate function of a nation. It cannot

A BLIND MAN S HOLIDAY. 71

be generous, because it has uo rights of its own of which
it can make sacrifice. Moral obligations belong to its
people as individuals. Legal obligations, financial obli-
gations, the pledges of treaties, only these can bind na-
tion to nation. A nation cannot be virtuous, for that
is a matter of individual conduct. It must be just. So
far as it fails to be this, it is simply corrupt.

It is said that if we do not annex the Philippines we
shall prove false to our obligations. Obviously there are
two primary pledges which must precede all others;
first the obligation of our whole history that we shall
never conquer and annex an unwilling people ; second,
our pledge at the beginning of the war, that the United
States has no disposition to seize territory or to dictate
its government.

" The United States hereby disclaims any disposition or inten-
tion to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said
island, except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its deter-
mination when that is accomplished to leave the government and
control of the island to its people."

The plea that these words were intended for Cuba
only and do not pledge us to like action elsewhere is too
cowardly to permit of discussion.

Several questions arise at once. What are those
obligations? To whom are they held? By what re-
sponsibility have they been incurred?

To the first question we may get this answer : We
are under obligations to see that the Philippines are no
longer subject to Spanish tyranny and misrule. In the
words of General Miles, " Twelve millions of people that
a year ago were suffering under oppression, tyranny, and

72 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

craelty are to-day under our protection. It would be
the crime of the nineteenth century to turn them back
again." Very well, then, we shall not turn them back,
nor could we do it if we would. Spain is helpless and
harmless. She has ceased to be a factor in the world's
affairs. What next? Let us quote further from General
Miles : " If you cannot give them government in their
own country, if you cannot establish government for
them, you can, at least, protect them until such time as
they shall be prepared for self-government. And if they
do not care to come and be part of this country you
can see to it that they have a liberal and free govern-
ment such as you enjoy yourselves."

This is, perhaps, an average statement of our supposed
obligations. If we had adopted this view we should
have had no war at Manila and our honor would be un-
tarnished. Some would put it more strongly. Our
obligations demand that we take the islands by force,
lest they fall back into the hands of Spain, or, still worse,
lest they become victims of the cruel schemes of the
German Emperor, ever anxious to try his hand on mat-
ters of which he knows nothing. For the House of
Hohenzollern, as well as ourselves, is afflicted with a
" manifest destiny."

But this German bugaboo is set up merely as an ex-
cuse. No nation on earth would dare set the heel of
oppression on any land our flag has made free. The
idea that every little nation must be subject to some
great one is one of the most contemptible products of
military commercialism. No nation, little or big, is
" derelict " that minds its own business, maintains law
and order, and respects the development of its own

A BLIND MAN S HOLIDAY. 73

people. If we behave honorably towards the people we
have freed, we shall set a fashion which the powers will
never dare to disregard.

We can be under no obligations under our Constitution
and theory of government, to do what cannot be done,
what will not be done, or ought not to be done.

Still others put the case in this way ! " We have
destroyed the only stable government in the Philippines.
It is our duty to establish another." But if this is really
the case we have done very wrong. We were told that
the rule of Spain was not stable, that it was not just, and
that it was far worse than no rule at all. Our sympathies
were with those who would destroy this government of
Spain, and our armies went out with our sympathies.
Either we were on the wrong side in the whole business,
or else we should now respect the rights of the people we
set forth to help. If, by ill chance, we have overturned
the only stable government, we must help the people to
make another. " A government of the people, for the
people, and by the people," would be a good kind to
help them to establish ; one made in their own interest
not in ours, even though we think them a sorry sort of
folk. We should not talk in the same breath of our duty
to humanity and of the demands of American commerce,
not even though both speeches, be canting falsehoods.
As a matter of fact, of all the people of the tropics the
inhabitants of Luzon have shown most promise of fairly
wise self-rule. All competent judges speak in the highest
terms of the cabinet and parliament at Malolos and of
their wisdom and self-restraint. At the same time under
whatever rule, these people will not cease to be orientals.

To better define these obligations let us find out to

74 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

whom they were incurred. Nobody in particular lays
claim to them. Surely we are not bound to Spain, for
she feels outraged and humiliated by the whole transac-
tion. The Filipinos ask for nothing more of us.
Doubtless their rulers would return our twenty millions
and give us half a dozen coaling stations if that would
hasten our departure. It is their firm resolve, so their
spokesmen in Hong Kong have declared, that they will
not consent " to be experimented upon by amateur
colonial administrators." Even our " benevolent assimi-
lation " is intolerable on the terms which we demand.

It was for freedom, not for law and order, that the
■Filipinos and the Cubans took up arms against Spain.
Good order we are trying to bring to the Filipinos, but
that does not satisfy. The grave is quiet, but it is not
freedom. Perhaps it is wrong for these people to care
for freedom, but we once set them the example, as we
have to many poor people, to strive for a liberty they
have never yet enjoyed.

More likely we owe obligations to the city of Manila.
Her business men look with doubt on Aguinaldo and his
cabinet, with gold bands and whistles and peacock
quills to indicate their rank and titles. Doubtless they
fear the native rabble and the native methods of col-
lection of customs. But, again, we have as to this only
prejudiced testimony. According to Lieutenant Calkins,
an honored officer in Dewey's fleet, the life and property
of foreigners has been as safe in Malolos as in San Fran-
cisco. Moreover, these peddlers from all the world have
no claims on us. They have long fished in troubled
waters and they have learned the art. The pound of
flesh they have exacted from the Filipinos, in times of

A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY. 75

peace serves as an insurance against all losses in war.
It was not to accommodate a few petty tradesmen, for the
most part Chinese, a few English, and a dozen Germans
and Japanese, that we entered into this war. If we owe
them protection, they owe something to us. The
shelter of the American flag is the birthright of Ameri-
cans. Maybe it is to Germany and France that we owe
obligations. To keep their rulers from falling out over
the rich spoils of the Philippines, we are Under bonds to
take them all ourselves. But these nations are not in
the slightest danger of fighting each other or fighting us
over the Philippines. The Philippines would be as safe
as an independent republic, with our good will, as they
would be in another planet. The huge bloodless com-
mercial trusts are afraid of a nation with a conscience.
Maybe we are under bonds to England alone. Her
advice is " take it," " take it," and those of her politi-
cians hitherto most prone to snub and humiliate us are
now most loud in their encouragements. No doubt
these clever schemers want to see us entangled in the
troubles of the Orient. No doubt England is sincere in
thinking that a few years' experience in the hardest of
schools will teach us something to our advantage as well
as to hers. In our compactness lies a strength which
alarms even England. It means our future financial and
commercial supremacy. It is England's way to play
nation against nation, so that the strong ones will keep
the peace, while the weaker ones are helpless in her
hands.

The essential spirit of British diplomacy is to rec-
ognize neither morality nor justice in relation to an
opponent. This has been explained and defended by

76 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

Chamberlain as a matter of course in questions of party
rivalry or imperial dominion. The only wrong is failure
to carry one's point. This feature of British diplomacy
, has been exemplified a hundred times. The career of
Cecil Rhodes, the struggle with Parnell, the Paris Tri-
bunal of Arbitration in 1893, are all cases in point.
This gives the clue to British diplomatic success, and it
explains also the cordial hatred the world over for
"Anglo-Saxon" methods. From beginning to end of
British colonial dealings with lower races there has never
appeared the word nor the thought of justice in the
sense in which our fathers used the word — equality before
the law. Law and trade constitute her sole interest
in tropical humanity, and law for trade. Paternal
helpfulness there has been in large store, but the thought
of human equality, in any sense of the term, is foreign to
British methods. To emphasize and perpetuate in-
equality lies at the basis of British polity.

To give up the idea of " equality of all men before the
law " would be to abandon our sole excuse for being as
a nation. We would then become a mere geographical
expression or police arrangement, and logically might as
well join Canada as a dependency of Great Britain. The
hope that we may do so is the source of much English
" good-will."

If we feel edgewise toward Germany,* or if Germany
is unfriendly toward us, we have England to thank for
it. That is her diplomacy. She means nothing wrong

* Doubtless German industrial jealousy is acute and well-
grounded and the loss of many good soldiers each year by emi-
gration displeases German militarism. But these matters have
gone on for years and have no relation with the war with Spain.

A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY. 7/

by it. She is our friend, and in politics no water is
thicker than her blood. We shall cease twisting the
British Lion's tail when we have parts equally vulnerable.
We shall not thwart England when we are dependent
upon her good will. But all this constitutes no obliga-
tion. We did not go into the war on England's account,
nor must we settle it to suit her. It is our first duty to
follow our own best interests.

I yield to no one in admiration for the British people
or the British character. The best thoughts of the
world spring from British brains, and British hands have
wrought earth's noblest deeds. " Let us not forget,"
observes Lowell, " that England is not the England only
of the snobs who dread the democracy they do not com-
prehend, but the England of history, of heroes, states-
men and poets, whose names are as dear and their
influence as salutary to us as to her." But British ine-
quality is not the source of lofty thought or brave deed.
We may emulate England in all matters of political ad-
ministration save the very one in which she now urges
on us her cynical advice. It was in protest against Brit-
ish inequality that the United States became a nation.
British politics have changed their form, but the basal
principles remain, and inequaUty' and injustice are no
more lovely now than in the days of '76.

A London journal recently pictures America as a rosy-
cheeked, unsophisticated youth who has left parental
boundaries and now " goes out to see the world." We
may accept this " lightly proffered laurel," but we may
note that the youth is gaining this experience under the
convoy of the toughest old pirate of the whole water
front.

78 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

Moreover, England welcomes our intrusion in the
Orient because she finds in us a necessary ally. We
become a partner in her games. More than this our
new relations must break down our protective tariff,
which is most offensive to her, as, perhaps, it should be
to us. The possession of Asiatic colonies makes non-
sense of our Monroe Doctrine. To realize this fact will
teach us needed caution. We shall not go at diplomacy
in our shirt-sleeves any more as though it were a game
of poker on a Mississippi flat-boat. Besides to follow in
England's footsteps is the sincerest form of flattery. It
gives her methods the sanction of our respectability. It
takes from the opposition party in Parliament one of its
strongest weapons. But this, agam, is no national obli-
gation. If any obligation whatever exists, it is to the
Filipinos. It is met by insuring their freedom from
Spain. For the rest, their fate is their own.

A higher class of English public men advise us to hold
the Philippines because they do not understand the pur-
pose or basis of our government. Our machinery of
rule is so constructed that it will not work with imwilling
people, nor with people lacking in the Saxon instinct
for co-operation. England has no scruples and no
ideals. Her only purpose, in the tropics, is to hold the
doors open to trade. In this business she has the lead,
and all gains of all trade swell her wealth. In her cap-
ital is the clearing house of all the world. There all
prices are fixed and all bills are settled. What is good
business for her might be impossible for us, who are
not as a nation in business.

Admitting, however, an obligation to do something to
somebody, by whom was such obligation incurred? To

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 79

whom have we given authority to bind us to change the
whole current of our history? Who is the mighty agent
that brings about such things? The Constitution pre-
scribes methods in which our people may incur obliga-
tions by concurrent action of Congress and the President.
Have we empowered a commodore or even a rear-ad-
miral to change our national purposes? Did the victory
at Manila bind our people to anything? To say that it
did is simple nonsense. This was an incident of war,
not a decision of peace. Did the action of the Presi-
dent in sending eighteen thousand soldiers to Manila
oblige us to keep them there, even if the Constitution
of the United States had to be changed to give this act
justification? If so, where did the President get his
authority? This, too, was an incident of war. More-
over, the President is not our ruler but our servant. The
people of the United States are subject to no obligations
save those they impose on themselves. Neither the
President nor the Cabinet have the slightest right to in-
cur national obligations. None have been incurred.

But it may be that efforts have been made to bind
the people to " expansion" in advance of their own de-
cision. The victory at Manila was so unexpected, so
heroic, so decisive, that it fired the imagination of our
nation. It set the world to talking of us, and it in-
spired our politicians with dreams of empire. Such
dreams are far from the waking thoughts of our people,
though while the spell was on us we made some move-
ment toward turning them into action. These steps
taken in folly our nation must retrace. It is not pleas-
ant to go backward. For this reason those responsible
for our mistakes insist that we are sworn to go ahead

8o IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY,

whatever the consequences. Political futures are in-
volved in the success of these schemes. And so every
effort has been used to rush us forward in the direction
of conquest. Our volunteer soldiery is held as an army
of invasion to rot in the marshes when summer comes,
as brave men once rotted in Libby and Andersonville.
Each step in the series has been planned so as to make
the next seem inevitable. To stop to reconsider our
steps is made to appear as backing down. The Ameri-
can people will not back down, and on this fact the
whole movement depends. This movement was not a
conspiracy, because every step was proclaimed from the
housetops and shouted back from the newspapers and
the mobs around the railway stations. No wonder the
fighting editor claims to dictate our national policy. The
current of " manifest destiny " is invoked as the cover
for the movement of Imperialism. At each step, too,
the powers that be assure us that they are not responsi-
ble, for the invisible forces of Divine Providence have
taken matters from their hands.

In the one breath we are told thai it is the will of
God that we should annex the Philippines and make
civilized American christians of their medley popula-
tion. In another, we must crush out the usurper,
Aguinaldo, drive his rebel followers to the swamps and
fastnesses and build up institutions with the coward
remnant that survive.

All this is in the line of least resistance. Along this
line Spain ruled and plundered her colonies. In such
fashion her colonies impoverished and corrupted Spain.
Because she had no moral force to prevent them, cruelty
and corruption became her manifest destiny. It will

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 8 1

be ours if we follow her methods. Toward such a man-
ifest destiny, " the tumult and the shouting " of to-day
are hurrying us along. The destiny which is manifest
is never a noble one. The strong currents of history
run deep, and the fates never speak through the daily
newspapers. " Hard are the steps, rough-hewn in flint-
iest rock, States climb to power by." Providence acts
only through men with strong brain and pure heart.
The hand of Providence is never at the helm when no
hand of man is there. Nations like men must learn to
say No, when Yes is fatal. To have the courage to stop
throwing good money after bad is the way nations keep
out of bankruptcy. To back out now, we are told,
would expose us to the ridicule of all the nations. But
to go on will do the same. It is we who have made
ourselves ridiculous. We have already roused the real
distress of all genuine friends in Europe, because we
have given the lie to our own history and to our own
professions. That a wise, strong, peaceful nation should
rise and fight for the freedom of the oppressed, rescuing
them with one strong blow, touches the imagination of
the world. The admiration fades into disgust in view
of the vulgar scramble for territory and commercial ad-
vantage, and the inability of those responsible to guide
the course of events in any safe direction.

I know that words of this sort are not welcome. The
newspapers have their jokes about Senator Hoar and
Cassandra, a person who once took a dark view of things
in very gloomy times. But there are occasions when
optimism is treason. Only an accomplice is cheerful in
presence of a crime. The crisis once past we may rejoice
in the future of democracy. It is a hopeful sign to-day

82 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

that the people have never consented, nor have those
directing affairs dared trust the plain issue of annexation
either to the people or to Congress. Their schemes
must pass through indirection, or not at all.

We need a cheerful and successful brigand like Cecil
Rhodes to pat us on the back and stiffen our failing
tierves. He is not afraid. Why should we flinch from
the little misdeeds we have in contemplation?

Alfred Russell Wallace, in the London Chronicle, ex-
presses the

" Disappointment and sorrow which 1 feel in common, I am
sure, with a large body of English and Americans, at the course
now being pursued by the government of the United States
toward the people of Cuba and the Philippine Islands.

" The Americans claim the right of sovereignty obtained by
the treaty, and have apparently determined to occupy and ad-
minister the whole group of islands against the will and consent
of the people. They claim all the revenues of the country and
all the public means of transport and they have decided to take
all this by military force if the natives do not at once submit.
Yet they say that they come ' not as Invaders and conquerors>
but as friends, to protect the natives in their homes, their em-
ployments and their personal and civil rights,' and for the pur-
pose of giving them 'a liberal form of government through
representatives of their own race.' But these people who have
been justly struggling for freedom are still spoken of as 'insur-
gents ' or ' rebels,' and they are expected to submit quietly to an
altogether new and unknown foreign rule which, whatever may
be the benevolent intentions of the President, can hardly fail to
be a more or less oppressive despotism.

" It may be asked what can the Americans do ? They cannot
allow Spain to come back again. . , . They are responsible for
the future of the inhabitants. But surely it is possible to revert
to their first expressed intention of taking a small island only as
a naval and coaling station and to declare themselves the pro-
tectors of the islands against foreign aggression.

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 83

" Having done this they might invite the civilized portion of
the natives to form an independent government, offering them
advice and assistance if they wish for it, but otherwise leaving
them completely free. If we express our disappointment (as
Englishmen) that our American kinsfolk are apparently follow-
ing our example, it is because, in the matter of the rights of
every people to govern themselves, we had looked up to them as
about to show us the better way by respecting the aspirations
towards freedom, even of less advanced races, and by acting in
accordance with their own noble traditions and republican
principles."

From France, M. de Pressensde voices the same feel-
ing in an article in the Contemporary Review :

" In the United States of America we see the intoxication of
the new strong wine of warlike glory carrying a great democracy
off its feet, and raising the threatening specter of militarism,
with its fatal attendant, Caesarism, in the background. Under
the pretext of ' manifest destiny,' the great republic of the West-
ern Hemisphere is becoming unfaithful to the principles of her
founders, to the precedents of her constitutional life, to the tradi-
tions which have made her free, glorious and prosperous. The
seductions of Imperialism are drawing the United States toward
the abyss where all the great democracies of the world have
found their end. The cant of Anglo-Saxon alliance, of the
brotherhood-in-arms of English-speaking people, is serving as a
cloak to the nefarious designs of those who want to cut in two
the grand motto of Great Britain, ' Imperium et libertas,' and to
make ' imperium ' swallow ' libertas.' In the United Kingdom a
similar tendency is at work. Everybody sees that the present
England is no longer the England, I do not say of Cobden or
Bright, but of Peel, Russell, Palmerston, Derby, or even Disraeli.
A kind of intoxication of power has seized the people. Mr.
Chamberlain has known how to take the flood in time, and to
ride the crest of the new wave. The Unionist party is disposed
to believe that it is to the interest of the privileged classes to
nurse the pride of empire ; first, because they govern it and pro-
fit by it ; secondly, and chiefly, because nothing diverts more

84 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

surely the spirit of reform than the imperialist madness. It is a
curious thing, but a fact beyond dispute, that when the masses
are on the verge of rising in their majesty and asking for their
rights, the classes have only to throw into their eyes the powder
of imperialism, and to raise the cry of ' The Fatherland in dan-
ger,' in order to bring them once more, meek and submissive, to
their feet."

Do we say that these obligations were entailed by
chance, and that we cannot help ourselves? I hear
many saying, " If only Dewey had sailed out of Manila
harbor, all would have been well." This seems to me
the acme of weakness. Dewey did his duty at Manila ;
he has done his duty ever since. Let us do ours. If
his duty makes it harder for us, so much the more we
must strive. It is pure cowardice to throw the responsi-
bility on him. Who are we to " plead the baby act? "
If Dewey captured land we do not want to hold, then let
go of it. It is for us to say, not for him. It is foolish
to say that our victory last May settled once for all our
future as a world power. It is not thus that I read our
history. Chance decides nothing. The Declaration of
Independence, the Constitution, the Emancipation Pro-
clamation, were not matters of chance. They belong to
the category of statemanship. A statesman knows no
chance. It is his business to foresee the future and to
control it. Chance is the terror of despotism. A chance
shot along the frontier of Alsace, a chance brawl in Hun-
gary, a chance word in Poland, a chance imbecile in the
seat of power, may throw all Europe into war. In a general
war the nations of Europe, their dynasties, and their
thrones, will burn like stubble in the prairie fire. Our
foundation is less combustible. Our Constitution is
something more than a New Year's resolution to be

A BUND MAN'S HOLIDAY. 85

broken at the first chance temptation. The Republic is,
indeed, in the gravest peril if chance and passion are to
be factors in her destiny. It was not fear of foreign
powers, nor fear of destiny that led Senator Sewell to
urge, last May " For God's sake, bring Dewey home."
It was fear of the rising tide of our own folly.

One of the ablest of British public men, one known to
all of us as a staunch friend of the United States through
the Civil War, when our allies in the present British Minis-
try could not conceal their hatred and contempt, writes
in a private letter to me these words :

" I could not say this in my public writings," he says,
and so I do not give his name, " but it seems to me that
expansionism has in it' a large element of sheer vulgarity,
in the shape of a parvenu desire for admission into the
imperialist and military camp of the Old Wprld."

This is the whole story. Our quasi-alliance with
Aguinaldo obliges us to see that he and his followers
do not rot in Spanish prisons. Here or about here our
obligation ends, though our interest in freedom might
go further. "Sheer vulgarity" does the rest. The
desire to hold a new toy, to enjoy a new renown, to feel
a new experience, or the baser desire to gain money by
it, is at the bottom of our talk about the new destiny of
the American republic and the new obligations which
this destiny entails.

We have set our national heart on the acquisition of
the Philippines to give Old Glory a chance in a distant
sea, to do something unheard of in our past history. We
look on every side for justification of this act, and the
varied excuses we can invent we call our obligations.
We have saved Manila from being looted by the bar-

86 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

barians. This may be true, though we have not the
slightest evidence that it was ever in such danger. But
we have made it a veritable hell on earth. Its saloons,
gaming halls and dives of vice have to-day few parallels
in all the iniquitous world.

But we have incurred, some say, the obligation to
civilize and christianize the Filipinos, and to do this we
must annex them, that our missionaries may be safe in
their work. " The free can conquer but to save." This
is the new maxim for the ensign of the Republic, re-
placing the " consent of the governed," and " govern-
ment by the people," and the worn out phrases of our
periwigged fathers.

But to christianize our neighbors is no part of the
business of our government. Dr. Worcester says
of the Filipinos that "as a rule the grade of their
morality rises with the square of the distance from
churches and other civilizing influences." This means
that the churches are not keeping up with our saloons
and gaming houses. If they are not we cannot help
them. Missionary work of Americans as against Mo-
hammedanism, Catholicism, or even heathenism, our
government cannot aid. It is our boast, and a righteous
one, that all religion is equally respected by our state. It
has been the strength of our foreign missionaries
that they never asked the support of armies. "The
force of arms,'' said Martin Luther, " must be kept far
from matters of the Gospel." The courage of devoted
men and women and the power of the Word, such is the
only force they demand. When the flag and the police
are sent in advance of the Bible, missionaries fall to the
level of ordinary politicians. It is the lesson of all

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 8/

history that the religious forms and aspirations of any
people should be respected by its government. From
Java, the most prosperous of oriental vassal nations, all
missionaries are rigidly excluded. They axe disturbers
of industry.

It is the lesson of England's experience that all forms
of government should be equally respected. In no case
has she changed the form, however much she may have
altered the administration. Success in the control of the
tropical races no nation has yet achieved, for no one has
yet solved the problem of securing industry without force,
of making money without some form of slavery. But
those nations which have come nearest solution have
most respected the religions and prejudices and govern-
mental forms of the native peoples. Individual men may
struggle as they will against heathenism. A government
must recognize religions as they are.

It is said again that the whole matter does not deserve
half the words given it. We destroyed the government,
such as it was, in Cuba and Manila ; we must stay until
we have repaired the mischief. When we have set things
going again it will be time to decide what to do. The
answer to this is that it is not true. We are not repairing
the damages anywhere, but are laying our plans for per-
manent military occupation, which is imperialism. Those
responsible for these aflairs have kept annexation steadily
in view. It is safe to say that there is no intention to
withdraw even from Cuba, or to permit any form of self-
government there, until American influences shall dom-
inate.

It is not because the governed have some intangible
right to consent that we object to this, but because the
7

88 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

machinery of democracy, which is acquiescence in action,
will not work without their co-operation.

But we must take the Philippines, some say, because
no other honorable course lies before us. Some civilized
nation must own them ; Spain is out of the question ; so
are the other nations of Europe, while Aguinaldo and the
Filipinos themselves, " big children that must be treated
like little ones," are unworthy of trust and incapable of
good government.

But, again, what guarantee is there that we shall give
good government? When did it become our duty to
see that anarchy and corruption are expelled from semi-
barbarous regions? When did we learn how to do it?
We have had six months in which to think about it.
Who has ever suggested a plan? For thirty years we
have misgoverned Alaska * with open eyes and even now

* Recently, according to the Springfield Kepublican, Senator
Carter asked unanimous consent for the consideration of a code
of laws for Alaska. " Various senators objected. Gallinger and
Bate thought a night session for such a purpose a very bad pre-
cedent. Mr. Tillman thought the time should be devoted to the
anti-scalping bill, and Mr. Chandler was anxious to discuss a ticket
brokerage bill." There being no senator from Alaska to enter
into trade or combination there is no hope for legislation to bring
order into the territory.

In a recent address Governor Roosevelt is reported as saying :
" Have you read in the papers that an Alaskan town (Wrangel)
wants to be transferred to Canada ? It wants to get out from
under our flag merely because no one has thought it worth while
to give Alaska good government. If we govern the Philippines,
Cuba, Porto Rico and Hawaii as we have governed Alaska, we
shall have the same results."

Mr. Brady, the excellent Governor of Alaska, says :

" There are sixty men in charge of the government of the ter-

A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY. 89

scarcely a visible sign of repentance. We are not sworn
to good government even in our own cities. We give
them self-government and that is all. The people eveiy-
where make their own standards. The standard of
Arizona is different from that of Massachusetts, and South
Carolina has another still. There is no good govern-
ment in America except as the people demand it. We
want good government on no other terms.

China, Corea, Siam, Turkey, Tartary, Arabia and the
peoples of Asia generally, " half devil and half child,"
are none of them under good government. The rulers
of Central America, of Venezuela, Bolivia, and, worst of
all, the unspeakable Hayti, are no more efficient or more
virtuous than the Filipinos. As men we may care for
these things and work for their improvement. As a na-
tion they are none of our business so long as the badness
of governnjient does not harm our national interests.
We have no nearer concern in the government of the
Philippines, nor can we give their people a government
any better than they know how to demand. We might
do so possibly, but we shall not. We are not in
knight-errantry "for our health," and we are in no
mood for trying fancy experiments. Those among us
who might lead child races to higher civilization are
not likely to be called on for advice.

Others say with swelling breasts that the finger of Pro-
vidence points the way for us, and we cannot choose but
obey. The God of battles has punished Spain for her

ritory. They have no interests in Alaska except to grab what
they can and get away. They are like a lot of hungry codfish.
Seven of these oiiicials, eleven per cent of the entire government,
are now under indictment for malfeasance in office."

go IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY,

centuries of cruelty, corruption, and neglect, and we are
but as the instrument in His hand.

There is a story of a man and his boys who got their
breakfast at a tavern where food was scarce and bills were
high. As they left the place they complained loudly of
the bad treatment they had received. At last one of the
boys spoke up ; " The Lord has punished that man. I
have my pocket full of his spoons."

"The terrible prophecy of Las Casas," says an elo-
quent orator, " has come true for Spain. The count-
less treasures of gold from her American bondsmen have
been sunk forever, her empire richer than Rome's has
been inherited by freemen, her proud armada has been
scattered, her arms have been overwhelmed, her glory
has departed. If ever retributive justice overtook an
evil-doer it has overtaken and crushed this arrogant
power. An army of the dead, larger by far than the
whole Spanish nation, stormed the judgment seat of
God demanding justice — stern, retributive justice. God
heard and answered. This republic is now striking the
last blow for liberty in America, an instrument of justice
in the hands of an omnipotent power. In the interest of
civilization, of imperative humanity, we now go forth to
the rescue of the last victim, strong in the consciousness
of the purity of our purpose, and the justice of our
cause."

Again let us say, " The Lord has punished that nation.
We have our pockets full of her spoons."

Doubtless Spain was very corrupt and very weak and
very wicked, but that is not for us to judge while we
have our pockets full of her spoons.

The plain fact is this : the guiding hand of Providence,

A BUND MAN'S HOLIDAY. 9I

in such connection as this, is mere figure of speech, in-
tended for our own justification. Doubtless Providence
plays its part in the affairs of men, but not in such
fashion as this. Providence is our expression for the
ultimate inevitable righteousness which rules in human
history. It "hath put down the mighty from their
seats and hath exalted them of low degree;" but its
voice is not the "sound of popular clamor." "Fame's
trumpet " does not set forth its decrees and it is not in-
terested in increasing volume of trade.

The war with Spain was in no sense holy, unless we
make it so through its results. Our victories indicate no
accession of divine favor. We succeeded because we
were bigger, richer, and far more capable than our
enemy. Our navy was manned with trained engineers,
while that of Spain was not. Our gross wealth made
sure the final success of our army in spite of incompe-
tence and favoritism which has risen to the proportions
of a national shame. When we have cast aside all
hopes of booty we shall be fit to sit in judgment on
the sins of Spain. Till then, to say that we alone are
led by Divine Providence is wanton blasphemy. Four
very different impulses carried us into the war ; the feel-
ing of humanity, the love of adventure, the desire for
revenge, and the hope of political capital. Strength
and wealth and our prestige led us to success. The de-
cision of history as to the righteousness of the war will
be determined by the motive that finally triumphs.

Again, some say we went to war in the interests of
humanity, civilization, and righteousness. To this end
we have poured out blood and treasure. It is only fair
that we should be paid for our losses. Let us fill our

92 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY,

pockets with the spoons. It ceases to be a war for hu-
manity when we have forced a humbled enemy, con-
demned without a hearing, to foot all the bills.

But we would plant the institutions of freedom in the
midst of the Orient. Freedom cannot be confined.
Expansion is her manifest destiny. " We are like the
younger sons of England who, finding their own country
inadequate, have gone forth to fill the unoccupied places
of the East, and now the time comes when our children
are beginning to face the conditions that hedged around
our fathers and made us turn our faces toward the West.
The United States on this continent hai^ been pretty
well surveyed, explored, conquered, and policed. Shall
we not see to it that our children shall have as good a
forward outlook as we have ? We have proved our ca-
pacity to expand. We have proved our capacity to
compete with any man. It were worse than folly, yea,
criminal, to attempt to set back the onward march of
manifest destiny."

So runs the current of yellow patriotism. But if the
Anglo-Saxon has a destiny incompatible with morality
and which cannot be carried out in peace, if he is bound
by no pledges and must ride roughshod over the rights
and wills of weaker people the sooner he is exterminated
the better for the world. In like strain we are reminded
that the arguments against expansion to-day were used
to oppose the Louisiana purchase in Jefferson's time and
the less glorious acquisition of the provinces of con-
quered Mexico. If expansion to Nebraska, Kansas,
Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Dakota, and California
was good national policy, why not still further to the
Philippines? But the differences between the one case

A BLIND MAN S HOLIDAY. 93

and the others are many and self-evident. The Louisi-
ana territory and the territory of California were ad-
jacent to our States. They were in the teinperate zone
with climate in every way favorable to the Anglo-Saxon
race and to the personal activity on which free institutions '
depend. They were virtually uninhabited districts,
being peopled chiefly by nomad barbarians who made
no use of the land, and whose rights the Anglo-Saxon
has never cared to consider. The first governments
were established by the free men who entered them.
Finally the growth of railroads and the telegraph brought
these vast regions almost from the first into the closest
touch with the East and with the rest of the world. If it
were not for the development of transportation, unfore-
seen by the fathers, the arguments they used against ex-
pansionism would have remained valid even as agains. <
the Louisiana purchase.

It is said that " Jefferson was a rank expansionist."
But there is no record that he favored expansion for
bigness' sake, the seizure or purchase of all sorts of land
and all sorts of inhabitants, regardless of conditions, re-
gardless of rights, and regardless of the interests of our
own people.
, The Philippines are not contiguous to any land of free-
dom. They lie in the heart of the torrid zone, " Nature's
asylum for degenerates." They are already densely popu-
lated — more densely than even the oldest of the United
States. Their population cannot be exterminated on
the one hand, nor made economically potent on the
other, except through slavery. Finally the conditions
of life are such as to forbid Anglo-Saxon colonization.
Among hundreds of colonial experiments in Brazil, in

94 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

India, in Africa, in China, there is not to-day such a
thing as a self-supporting European colony in the tropics.
White men live through officialism alone. There are
military posts, so placed as to appropriate the land and
' enslave the people, but there is not one self-dependent,
I self-respecting European or American settlement.

Individual exceptions and special cases to the con-
trary, the Anglo-Saxon or any other civilized race de-
generates in the tropics mentally, morally, physically.
This statement has been lately denied in some quarters.
As opposed to it has been urged the fact that Thackeray
and Kipling, the most virile of British men of letters,
were born in India, and many other distinguished men
have first seen the light in tropical Africq, or Polynesia.
Several Stanford athletes are natives of Hawaii, and
Cuba has furnished her full share of the men of science
of the blood of Spain. But this argument indicates a con-
fusion of ideas. Degeneration may be of any one of three
different kinds : race decline, personal degeneration, and
social decay.
X* The essential of race degeneration is the continuous
lowering of the mental or physical powers of each success-
ive generation. Such a process is very slow, requiring cen-
turies before it shows itself. It finds its cause in unwhole-
some conditions which destroy first the bravest, strongest,
and most active, leaving the feeble, indolent and cow-
ardly to perpetuate the species. Military selection, or
the seizure of the strong to replenish the armies, has pro-
duced race degeneration in many parts of Europe.
Such degeneration has been the curse of Italy and parts
of France and Switzerland and doubtless of Spain and
Germany also. The dull sodden malarial heat of the

A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY. 95

tropics spares the indolent longest. In the Song of the
Plague, written by some unknown British soldier, we
find these words as to India : —

" Cut oif from the land that bore us,
Betrayed by the land we find,
When the brightest are gone before us,
And the dullest are left behind."

This is the beginning of race degeneration. The
Anglo-Saxon in the tropics deteriorates through the
survival of the indolent and the loss of fecundity ; but
this is met or concealed by a number of other tenden-
cies, and is not soon apparent. The birth of a Kipling,
a Thackeray, or a Dole could not in any way affect the
argument. The British child born in India to-day must
be reared in England ; and it is to be remembered that
not all the regions south of the Tropic of Cancer are to
be classed as tropical ; most of Mexico, much of India,
and the whole Andean region belong to the temperate
zone. The equable climate of the Hawaiian Islands is
not in any proper sense torrid.

In the tropics the tendency to personal decay is more
directly evident. The swarm of malarial organisms, the
loss of social restrictions, the reduced value of life, the i
lack of moral standards, all tend to promote individual
laxity and recklessness. "Where there are no Ten
Commandments," and " the best is as the worst " there,
life is held cheap and men grow careless. Kipling's
fable of " Duncan Parenness " tells the story of personal
degeneration, and this case is typical of thousands and
thousands. Vice and dissipation are confined to no zone,
but in the tropics few men of northern blood can escape
them.

96 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

From a personal letter from Manila, Mr. John J,
■ Valentine publishes these words :

" Moral suicide awaits nine out of every ten young
men, who, lacking the elements of christian training and
influence, visit the far East. The morality of the treaty
ports from Yokohama to Suez presents a darker picture
than the slums of Europe can offer. There temptation
is all but overpowering ; it stalks on the streets, is regis-
tered at the hotels, and put-up at the social clubs. Its
representatives are prowling into Manila from Hong
Kong and Singapore. November and December last
witnessed a veritable Klondykan rush to the former
Spanish capital. As a result, Manila is becoming a den
of vice. The Escolta, the leading street, facetiously
referred to as the 'Yankee beer chute,' resembles
somewhat a midway, and is all but literally lined with
saloons. I counted four hundred in a little over a mile.
These are mostly kept by Americans. The largest cafe,
known as the Alhambra, has frequently closed its bar at
four in the afternoon because its stock of liquor was ex-
hausted. Do the Filipinos form the larger complement
of their patrons? Not at all, our own boys are their
customers, and many of them boys, who prior to their
arrival at Manila, had not, I venture to say, ever touched
a glass of intoxicating liquor.

" The young man without capital has no business in
these islands. Until order is brought out of chaos, the
situation becomes more stable, the clouds lift, and the
necessity of maintaining a large force to hold in check
the native population is removed, the best place for our
young men is at home, and even under the most favorable
conditions, had I a son, I would feel somewhat as though

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 97

I was consigning him to almost certain destruction did
I permit him to take up residence in the Orient, when
necessity did not compel his passing beyond our shores."

With individual deterioration goes social decay. Man I
becomes less careful of his dress, his social observances,',
his duties to others. Woman loses her regard for con- 1
ventionalities, for her reputation, and for her character. ;
The little efforts that hold society together are abandoned
one by one. The spread of the " Mother Hubbard,"
crowding out more elaborate forms of dress, indicates a
general failure of social conventionalities. The decay
of society reacts on the individual. Where it is too
warm or too malarial to be conventional, it is too much
trouble to be decent. Without going into causes, it is
sufficient to say that Anglo-Saxon colonies of self-re-
specting, self-governing men and women are practically
confined to the temperate regions.

The annexation of the Philippines is, therefore, not a
movement of expansion. We cannot expand into space
already full. ->, Our nation cannot expand where freedom
cannot go. Neither the people nor the institutions of
the United States can ever occupy the Philippines. The
American home cannot endure there, the town-meeting
cannot exist. There is no room for free laborers, no
welcome for them, and no pay. The sole opening for
Americans in any event will be as corporations or agents
of corporations, as Government officials or as members
of some profession requiring higher than native fitness.
There is no chance for the American workman, but for
syndicates they offer great opportunities. Yes, for the
syndicates who handle politics as an incident in business.
But the fewer of such syndicates we shelter under our flag,

98 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

the better for our people. Let them take their chances
without our help.

If it were possible to exterminate the Filipinos as we
have destroyed the Indians, replacing their institutions
and their people by ours, the political objections to an-
nexation would, in the main, disappear, whatever might
be said of the moral ones.

For our extermination of the Indian, there is, in general,
no moral justification. There is a good political excuse
in it — that we could and did use their land in a better
way than was possible to them. We have no such excuse
in Luzon ; we cannot use the land except as we use the
lives of the people.

We cannot plant free institutions in the Orient be-
cause once planted they will not grow ; if they grow they
will not be free. We cannot exterminate these people,
and if we did we could not use their land for our own
people; we could only fill it with Asiatic colonists,
Malay, Chinese, or Japanese, more of the same kind,
not of our kind.

" Any attempt to govern the tropical possessions of
the United States on democratic principles,* says Pro-
fessor W. AUeyne Ireland, one of our wisest authorities,
" is doomed to certain failure. It has been already
shown that without forced labor, or at least some form
of indentured labor, large industries cannot be developed
in tropical colonies." Such forced labor can be con-
trolled only by the compulsion of the government as in
Java, or by the activity of great corporations as in
Hawaii and Trinidad.

"It is thought by many," says Mr. Ireland, "that
though it may be unadvisable to grant the (tropical)

A BLIND MANS HOLIDAY. 99

colonies representative government at present, the time
will soon come when the people will show themselves
capable of self-government. Judging from past expe-
rience there would seem to be little hope that these
pleasant anticipations will ever be realized. We look in
vain for a single instance within the tropics of a really
well-governed country."

The notion that in these fertile islands our surplus
working men shall find homes is the height of absurdity.
Our labor leaders understand this well enough, and for
once they stand together on the side of common sense.
Scarcely any part of the United States is so crowded
with people as Luzon or Porto Rico ; in no part is the
demand for labor less or its rewards so meager. Ten
cents a day is not a free man's scale of wages ; and no
change of government can materially alter this relation.
In the tropics the conditions of subsistence are so easy
and the incentives to industry so slight that all races ex-
posed to relaxing influences become pauperized. It is the
free-lunch system on a boundless scale, the environment
of Nature too generous to be just, too kind to be exacting.

For the control of dependent nations and slave races
the fair sounding name of Imperialism has lately come
into use. It has been hailed with joy on the one hand,
for it is associated with armorial bearings and more than
royal pomp and splendor. It has been made a term of
reproach on the other, and our newspaper politicians
now hasten to declare that they favor expansion only
when it has no taint of Imperialism. But to our British
friends nothing could be more ridiculous. You must
have an iron hand or you get no profits. To cast aside
Imperialism is to cast away the sole method by which

lOO IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

tropical colonies have ever been made profitable to com-
merce or tolerable in politics. On the other hand these
same people tell us that they have not the slightest
thought of making states of Cuba or the Philippines, or
of admitting the Filipinos to citizenship. But if the
Filipino is not a citizen of his own land, who is .'

We are advised on good patrician authority that all is
well, whatever we do, if we avoid the fatal mistake of
admitting the brown races to political equality — of letting
them govern us. We must rule them for their own good
— ^never for our advantage. In other words, lead or
drive the inferior man along, but never recognize his
will, his manhood, his equality ; never let him count one
when he is measured against you.

These maxims should be familiar ; they are the phil-
osophy of slavery, and they only lack the claim of the
right to buy and sell the bodies and souls of men. Our
purchase of the Filipinos from Spain, and our subsequent
treatment of the resultant slave insurrection supplies the
missing element.

"Benevolent Despotism," is Mr. Kidd's expression
for the sole method of control possible in the tropics,
leading to industrial success. " Slavery " is an older term
of similar meaning. " I am for the black man, as against
the alligator," Douglas is reported to have said, " but as
between black man and white man, I am for the white
man every time." This is inequality before the law, the
essence of slavery, the essence of Imperialism which is
slavery as applied to nations. Every argument used in
defense of it, applies as well to the defense of slavery
and has been worn out in that cause.

One plan or the other we must adopt ; either self-

A BUND man's holiday. IOI

rule or Imperialism ; there is no middle course, and both
under present conditions are virtually impossible. Let
the friends of annexation develop some plan of govern-
ment, any plan whatever, and its folly and ineffectiveness
will speedily appear. To go ahead without a plan means
certain disaster, and that very soon ; whatever we do or
do not do, there is no time to lose.

Conquest of the Orient is not expansion, for there is
no room for free manhood to grow there. It is useless
to disclaim Imperialism when we are red-handed in the
very act. Annexation without Imperialism is sheer
anarchy. Annexation with Imperialism may be much
worse, for so far as it goes it means the abandonment of
democracy. The Union cannot endure " half slave, half
free," half republic, half empire. We may make vassal
tribes of the Filipinos, but never free states in the sense
in which the name " state " applies to Maine, Iowa, or
California. The Philippines can have no part in the
Federal Union. Their self-government must be of a
wholly different kind, the outgrowth of their own needs
and dispositions. What they need is not our freedom,
but some form of paternal despotism or monarchy of
their own choosing which shall command their loyalty and
yet keep them in peace.

" It is no man's duty to govern any other man."
Still less is it a nation's duty to govern another nation.
All that the weak nations ask of the strong is : " Stand
out of my sunlight and let me alone."

We have never adopted the theory that each small
nation must be tributary to some other, and that each
nation of the lazy tropics must have slave drivers from
Europe to make its people work. -^

102 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

Under the terms of our Federal Union, the United
States has jurisdiction over Louisiana and California.
But in like degree California and Louisiana have jurisdic-
tion over the United States. If under republican forms we
assert our authority over Luzon and Mindanao we grant
in like degree to Luzon and Mindanao authority over
us. The authority of democracy is equal and reciprocal.

Imperialism means such a control of tropical lands
that they may be economically productive or that their
doors may be thrown open to commerce. It is a defi-
nite business, difficult and costly, with few rewards and
many dangers. It is fairly well understood by some of
those engaged in it. It has been successfully conducted
along certain very narrow lines by Great Britain and by
Holland, although both countries have the record of
many failures before they learned the art. Germany has
tried it for a little while, as have also Japan and Belgium,
none of these with successful results. Spain is out of
the business in utter bankruptcy and her assets are in our
hands for final disposition. France has made failures
only, and this because she has held colonies for her own
ends, regardless of their own interests.

"No sooner," says Lionel Dfecle, "was the island (of
Madagascar) in the hands of these (French colonial
leaders) than they closed it to all foreign prospectors.
They imposed prohibitive duties on all foreign goods,
keeping the country for the French colonists that never
came, and that never will come."

Control of the tropics has none of the glories we vul-
garly associate with imperial sway. Its details are trivial,
paltry and exasperating in the last degree. The more
successful as to money, the more offensive to freedom.

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 103

In some regions, as Guiana, no nation has yet accom-
plished anything either m bringing civilization or in mak-
ing money, while in Java and Trinidad the results, how-
ever great, have been financial or commercial only. In
Jamaica, the abolition of slavery marked the end of in-
dustrial prosperity. Every dollar made in Java has been
blood money, red with the blood of Dutch soldiers on
the one side and with that of the Malay people on the
other.

Concerning the conditions in Java, Mr. Valentine uses
these words:

" The history of Netherlands India — the Dutch Colonies in
Malaysia — is a light-and-shadow picture. Its bright side depicts
the wealthy plantation owner in Europe surrounded by every
luxury of his home land, annually in receipt of millions of guilders
from his East Indian plantations. The contrast is found in the
humid tropic lands, where some 30,000,000 patient, cowed Malays,
working under the harsh supervision of agents, produce the
wealth that rightfully is theirs, because earned by them on lands
which have been wrested or tricked from them and held by the
foreigners at the expense of thousands of lives annually among
the white troops sent out to maintain a usurped supremacy,
gained gradually over the unsuspecting and friendly natives by
false pledges, broken promises and ultimately by force of arms."

Again he says :

" The language of these people is soft and musical, — the Ita-
lian of the tropics — their ideas are poetic and their love of
flowers, perfumes, music, dancing, heroic plays and emotional
art of every description proves them highly aesthetic. Their
reverence for rank and age, coupled with an elaborate etiquette
and punctilious courtesy to one another, marked even in the
common people, when contrasted with their abject crouching
humility before their despotic Dutch masters, are themes for sad
reflection and arouse just indignation. The sight of quiet, in-
8

I04 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY,

offensive peddlers, who beseech chiefly with their eyes, being
furiously kicked out of a hotel courtyard or any other public
place, when Mynheer does not choose to buy, causes the casual
looker-on to recoil ; but to see little native children actually lifted
by the ear and hurled away from a humble vantage point on
the curbstone to make way for a pajamaed Dutchman who wishes
to view some troops that may be marching by, makes one sick at
heart.

" Said a Dutch official to a visitor : ' I noticed you looked at
the whipping-post in the j^.' ' Yes ; we sometimes flog them
lightly. If a man on parole does not return to the jail in time a
gendarme generally finds him in his hut and brings him back,
when, as he expects, he gets a. few lashes. We don't punish
severely — they would never forget that.' Can they ever forget
the indignity of a single lash, which, though lightly laid on, yet
stifles or destroys the spirit of manhood ?

" It is said that the disposition of the Javanese is now chang-
ing. The Dutch have lost confidence in native troops. The
people now come freely into contact with Europeans, the educa-
tion given them has had an effect, and communication has been
rendered easy. They do not fear the Europeans as they formerly
did. The time is past when the entire population of a village
could be driven with a stick to a far-off plantation — the pruning
knife and the axe would be quickly turned against the driver in
these latter days. They no longer believe that the European is
interested in their welfare, and are well aware that they are cheated
out of a large proportion of the value of the coffee harvest.
However much the colonist may regret it, the period of darkness
is passing away and the time of coercion in Java giving place to
better conditions, and any attempt to stay the tide of progress
will only call forth the enmity of the natives. The Malay spirit
of revenge has done much, perhaps, to bring about the present
governmental era of comparative kindness, fair-dealing and jus-
tice in Java."

The state committee, on government coffee planta-
tions is quoted as saying in its latest reports :

" If the native has not become more progressive and sensible,
he is, at least, wiser in matters about which he should be kept in

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. lOj

the dark, unless the government means tb remove coercion at
the expense of the exchequer."

Concerning " contract labor " as now developed in
Hawaii, Mabel Craft,* makes the following observation :

" One glaring instance of this political immorality existed in
Hawaii for years in the shape of a system of contract labor, with
penal enforcement, which differed little from southern slavery.
They will tell you down there that this labor was necessary for
the development of the island — that sugar could not be produced
without it, and that without sugar the islands would never have
been rich. And what they tell you is perfectly true. For sugar
the contract-bound Chinese and Japanese were necessary, and
for the commercial prosperity of the islands there must be sugar.
I believe that the southern owners of cotton plantations pleaded
a similar necessity for almost a hundred years.

" The contract laborer is a wage-slave. For a long time he
had no name, being known only by a number, like a convict,
until public opinion forced a change. His contract was penally
enforced, and if he ran away he was recaptured and brought back
and forced to serve out his time. The only difference between
this slavery and that of the South is that the Hawaiian slaves
are paid a certsun wage, and that the consuls look after the rights
of their countrymen when abuses become too flagrant. There is,
too, n suggestion of free-will in the fact that the Orientals are
supposed to bind themselves willingly in their own countries.
But there are on the island of Hawaii whole villages of fugitive
laborers, hidden in inaccessible places in the mountains — camps
whither other laborers flee, somewhat as they did to the Dismal
swamp.

" It is something of a shock to the calloused Westerner to find
a government almost entirely composed of the thin, cool New
England blood — the blood of Phillips and of Garrison — so calmly
determining that the labor of the country needs must be given
it. If the kings had done it there would have been no surprise
— they knew no better ; but these political sons of priestly sires,
who had overturned a government because they believed in the

* Hawaii — Nei. p. 30.

I06 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

equality of men — ^how could they reconcile it with their con-
sciences ? It seems almost as though in their anxiety to instruct
the natives, the missionaries had forgotten to teach the Golden
Rule to their own sons.''

Since the annexation of Hawaii the importation of
coolie laborers from Asia has been checked, and similar
importation of Portuguese indentured laborers has taken
its place.

The voice of common British opinion seems to be that
it is our turn to take a hand in the control of the tropics.
This idea is assumed in Kipling's appeal, "Take Up
the White Man's Burden," and the real force of his verse
is a warning that there is no easy way to success. The
motive is to be not glory, but the profit to the world. It
is our duty, with the others, to share the burden of tropi-
cal control that we may increase the wealth and com-
merce of the nations. There is some reason in this
appeal. It is a business we cannot wholly shirk. I
maintain, however, that so far as we are concerned, this
is a matter purely for individual enterprise. The Ameri-
can merchant, missionary, and miner have taken up the
white man's burden cheerfully ; the American Govern-
ment cannot.

" A certain class of mind," says Mr. Charles F. Lum-
mis, "froths at the bare suggestion that the United
States cannot 'do anything any other nation can.'
Well, it cannot — and remain United States. A gentle-
man has all the organs of a blackguard. But a gentle-
man cannot lie, steal, bully nor ravish. A republic can-
not be a despotism."

I notice that not one of our tried friends in England,
men like Bryce, Morley, and Goldwin Smith, who under-

A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY. 107

Stand our spirit and our laws, urge the holding of the
Philippines. In England, as in America, the call to
hold the Philippines is mainly that of the jingo and the
politician, the reckless and conscienceless elements in
the public life of each nation joining hands with each
other.

The white man's burden, in the British sense, is to
force the black man to support himself and the white
man, too. This is the meaning of "control of the
tropics." The black man cannot be exterminated at
home as the red man can ; therefore, let us make him
carry double. The world needs all that we can get out
of him. This may be all the better for the black man
in need of exercise, but it is the old spirit of slavery,
and its disguise is the thinnest.

Our Monroe Doctrine pledges us to a national interest
in the tropics of the New World. This is because
throughout the New World American citizens have in-
terests which our flag must protect. In matters of
legitimate interest no nation has been less isolated than
America; but our influence goes abroad without our
armies. Force of brains is greater than force of arms,
more worthy and more lasting. Of all the recent phases
of American expansion the most important and most
honorable is that which is called the " peaceful conquest
of Mexico." We hear little of it because it sounds no
trumpets and vaunts not itself. The present stability of
Mexico is largely due to American influences. Every
year American intelligence and American capital find
better and broader openings there. In time, Mexico
shall become a republic in fact as well as in name, side
by side in the friendliest relation with her sister republic

Io8 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

of broader civilization. It is not necessary that the
same flag should float over both. If one be red, white,
and blue, let the other be green, white, and red — what
matter? The development of Mexico, the "awaking of
a nation," is thus a legitimate form of expansion. It is
not a widening of governmental responsibility, but a
widening of American influence and an extension of
republican ideas. The next century will see Mexico an
American instead of a Spanish republic, and this without
war, conquest or intrigue.

The purpose of the Monroe Doctrine is not to keep
the European flag from America. Its function is to pre-
vent the extension here of European colonial methods,
the domination of weak races by strong, of one race for
the good of another, of the principle of inequality of
right which underlies slavery.

The spread of law and order, respect for manhood,
of industrial wisdom and commercial integrity, this is
the true " white man's burden," not the conquest and
enslavement of men of other races. Expansion is most
honorable and worthy, if only that which is worthy and
honorable is allowed to expand. The love of adventure,
a precious heritage of our race, may find its play under
any flag if it cannot honorably take our own to shelter
it.

The world of action is just as wide to-day as it ever
was, and if the red, white, and blue floated over every
foot of it, it would be no wider.

If after our conquest of Mexico, while our flag floated
over Chapultepec, we had never hauled it down but had
seized the whole land, we should have gained nothing
for civilization. The splendid natural development of

A BUND man's holiday. 109

the country by which, in Diaz's own words, it has be-
come " the germ of a great nation," would have been as
impossible under our forms as under the imperial forms
of Napoleon and Maximilian. The modem growth of
Japan would never have taken place had she, like India,
been numbered with England's vassals. A nation must
develop from within by natural processes if it is to be-
come great and permanent.

But some urge that we must hold far-off colonies, the
farther the better, for the sake of our own greatness.
Great Britain is built up by her colonies. " What does
he know of England, who only England knows?"

" Just pride is no mean factor in the state,
The sense of greatness makes a people great."

The grandeur of Rome lay in her colonies, and in her
far and wide extension must be the greatness of the
United States.

But the decline of Rome dates from the same far and
wide extension. Extension for extension's sake is a
relic of barbarous times. An army in civilization must
exist for peace not for war, and it should be as small as
it can safely be made. A standing army means waste,
oppression, and moral decay. Carlyle once said some- •
thing like this, " It is not your democracy or any other
'ocracy that keeps your people contented. It is the
fact that you have very much land and very few people."
But this is not half the truth. The main reason of our
prosperity is our freedom from war. Our farmer carries
no soldier on his back. We fear no foreign invader be-
cause we invite none. Were the people of the continent
of Europe once freed from the cost of mihtarism, their

no IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

industrial progress would be the wonder of the ages.
As it is they are ground down by worse than medieval
taxation. A French cartoon represents the fanner of
1 780 with a feudal lord on his back. The French farmer
of 1900 is figured as bearing a soldier, then a politician,
and on the back of these a money-lender. Without
these, industry would buy prosperity and prosperity con-
tentment ; with contentment would rise new hope. The
hopelessness of militarism is the basis of European
pessimism ; men see no end to the piling up of engines
of death. Were the continent of Europe freed from
killing taxation, England could no longer hold her prim-
acy in trade. War has destroyed the life of her rivals.
Could bankrupt Italy disband her armies and sink her
worthless navies the glories of the golden age would come
again. Could France cease to be militant she would no
longer be decadent. If politics in the army is fatal to
military power the army in politics is fatal to the state.
No nation can grow in strength when its bravest and best
are each year devoured by the army. This has gone on
in southern Europe for a thousand years.

" War's great purpose," says Edward Markwick, " is the
fostering of strength, not physical strength alone, but the
combination of moral, intellectual and physical strength."
But the actual effect of war is exactly the reverse of
this. Its call is ever in Kipling's words, " Send forth the
best ye breed." And the best never return. With the
selection of the best for exile and destruction the stan-
dard of the race at home inevitably declines. This is
the story of the failure of the Latin races. It is at least
a warning to all others. Some one thus apostrophizes
ancient Greece :

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. Ill

" Of all your thousands grant but three
To make a new Thermopylae."

But this cannot be. The heroes are dead. The sons
of heroes were never born, and the men of old who ever
" with a frolic welcome took the thunder and the sun-
shine " have given place to a race of clodhoppers and cow-
ards, the lineal descendants of men like themselves whom
the warriors could not use. " 'Tis Greece, but living
Greece no more."

The most insidious foe to race development is military
selection. The destruction of the brave in the Roman
wars finally, according to Otto Sech, left the Romans a
race of " congenital cowards." In proportion as a na-
tion succeeds in war, it must lose its possibility of future
success in war or peace. The greatest loss to America
in her Civil War rests in the fact that a million of her
strongest, bravest, most devoted men have left no de-
scendants. More than the men who died we miss the men
who never were. Such loss has gone on in Europe since
war began. It has grown more destructive since the
individual strength of the warrior ceased to count — lost
in the multitude of battalions. If we cannot stop fight-
ing, civilization will have nothing left worth fighting for.

The terrible wastes of war are recognized by Great
Britain. These she has tried to minimize by letting alone
everything which does not relate to commerce. She has
ceased to hope for the impossible and has come down
to business principles. The British Empire is a huge
commercial trust. England has no illusions. " England
neither fears nor admires any nation under heaven,"
writes an Oxford scholar. She never fights save when
she is sure to win and to throw the costs on her opponent.

112 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

She has secured all points of real commercial advantage
and is making the most of the ignorance and folly of
those who strive to emulate her.

Great Britain expands where order and trade extend.
Our expansion demands one thing more, equality of all
men before the law. All expansion of our boundaries
brought about by honorable means and carrying equal
justice to all men, I, for one, earnestly favor. To that
limit, and that only, I write myself down as a " rank ex-
pansionist." I see no honor in our seizure of the Phil-
ippines, nor prospect of justice in our ultimate rule.

Our British friends speak of the smoothness of their
colonial methods, especially in the Crown colonies, which
Parliament cannot touch. Everything runs as though
newly oiled and the British public hears nothing of it.
Exactly so. It is none of the public's business, and the
less the public has to say the less embarrassment from its
ignorant meddling. The Colonial Bureau* belongs to
the Crown, not to the people. The waste and crime
and bloodshed do not rest on their heads. But we
are not ready for that kind of adjustment. Our Execu-
tive is a creature of the public. We have no govern-
mental affairs which are sacred from the eyes or the
hand of the people. " Government of the people, for
the people, and by the people " implies that the people
are to be interested in all its details ; every one to the
least and the greatest, even at the risk of destroying its

* In the journals, to-day, I see a record of a question addressed
in Parliament to the British Minister of Finance. " This is the
question of government with government," said he, in refusing
to answer. In other words, imperial affairs in England are none
of the people's business. If they were, there would be fewer of
them.

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. II 3

smoothness of operation. Hence, colonial rule as un-
dertaken by us must be marred by vacillation, ignorance,
incompetence, parsimony, and neglect. All these defects
appear in our foreign relations as well. For the reason
of the greater intelligence of our people in public affairs,
our government will enter on the control of the tropics
with a great handicap. The people want to know all
about it. The Administration must keep open books
and justify itself at every step. This will act against
its highest efficiency. The forms of self-government are
not adapted to the government of others. The very
strength of the Republic unfits it for complicated tasks,
because its power can be brought at once into effect
only as the people understand its purposes. Popular
government and good government are two very different
things. Often they are for generations not on speaking
terms with each other.

The advantages of sound nationality over strong govern-
ment were the subject of the fullest discussion a hun-
dred years ago. The feeble rule of democracy is the
strongest of all governments when it has the force of the
popular will behind it ; when this fails it is paralyzed as
all government should be. A monarchy is more effec-
tive in foreign affairs and calls out better service thaa
democracy. If that were all we might revert to mon-
archy and close the discussion. But that is not all, and
every move toward centralization costs on the other side.
The essential fact of monarchy is not the presence of the
king, but the absence of the people in all large transactions.

This subject has been ably discussed by Goldwin
Smith, who calls special attention to our want of govern-
mental apparatus for the control of dependencies. That

114 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

we car.not have such apparatus most other British writers
have failed to note. Imperialism demands the powers
of an emperor.

" The British Crown, for the government of the Indian Em-
pire, has an imperial service attached to it as a monarchy, and
separate from the services which are under the immediate con-
trol of Parliament. British India, in fact, is an empire by itself ;
governed by a Viceroy who is a delegate of the Crown, exempt
as a rule from the influence of home politics and reciprocally
exercising little influence over them. Before the Mutiny, which
broke up the army of the East India Company, India was still
the dominion of that Company ; and the transfer of it to the
Crown, though inevitable, was not unaccompanied by serious
misgiving as to the political consequences which might follow.
Even for the government of other dependencies Great Britain
has men like the late Lord Elgin, detached from home parties
and devoted to the Imperial Service. In her dependencies Great
Britain is, in fact, still a monarchy, though at home she has be-
come practically a republic. In the case of the United States it
would seem hardly possible to keep the imperial service free
from political influence, or, reciprocally, to prevent the influence
of the empire on politics at home. Imperial appointments would
almost inevitably be treated as diplomatic appointments are
treated now.''

" In what, after all," continues Goldwin Smith, " does the pro-
fit or bliss of imperial sway consist ? The final blow has just
been dealt to the miserable and helpless remnant of that empire
on which, in the day of its grandeur, the sun was said never to
set, and to which Spanish pride has always desperately clung. It
may safely be SEud that not the expulsion of Moriscos or Jews,
nor even the despotism of the Inquisition, did so much to ruin
Spain as the imperial ambition which perverted the energies of
her people, turning them from domestic industry and improve-
ment to rapacious aggrandizement abroad. The political and
religious tyranny was, in fact, largely the consequence of the im-
perial position of the monarchy, which, by the enormous extent
of its dominions and its uncontrolled sources of revenue, was
lifted above the nation."

A BLIND MANS HOLIDAY. 1x5

In the conduct of the war and the peace negotiations
which followed it we have examples of the conditions of [
colonial rule. At no step since the beginning has the ;
American people been consulted. At no point has con-
sultation been possible. In managing affairs like this
there can be no divided councils. The responsible head
must rule, and it matters not a straw what is the wish of
the people who foot the bills. The only check on the
Executive is the certainty that the people will have the
last word. What you think or I think or the people
think of the whole business cuts no figure whatever in
the progress of events, because our opinion can at no
time be asked. After all, we are not so much worried
because we have not asked the consent of the people of
the Philippines. It is because the American people
have not been consulted. In a matter most vital to the
life of the nation they are represented only by the rabble
of the streets. When their consent should be asked
they are told that it is too late to say, No !

But there are many wise economists who would make
permanent just this condition of affairs. The certainty
that success in colonial matters would take them abso-
lutely out of the hands of the people is their argument
for imperial expansion as opposed to democracy.

Through concentration of power in the Executive we
may be able to make of Havana and Manila clean and
orderly cities. Shall we not by similar means sooner or
later purify San Francisco and New York? If martial
law is good for Luzon or for Santiago, why not for Wil-
mington, or Virden, or even for Boston?

If military methods will clean up Havana and Santiago,
why not use them for the slums of all cities? If it is our

Il6 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

" white man's burden " to make the black man work in
the tropics, why not make white men work outside of
the tropics? If we furnish public employment in the
tropics, forcing the unemployed to accept it, why not do
the same with the unemployed everywhere? Why not
makes slaves of all who fail to carry the black man's
burden of toil ?

To be good, it is argued, government must first be
strong, and the difficulties before us will demand and at
last secure the strong hand. .

Impressed by the weakness and corruption of popular
government these economists wish, at any cost, to limit
it. To decide by popular vote scientific questions like
the basis of coinage, the nature of the tariff, the control
of corporations, is to dispose of them in the most unscien-
tific way possible. The vote of a majority really settles
nothing, and a decision which the next election may re-
verse exposes us to the waste which vacillation always
entails.

It is said that in the ideal of the fathers our govern-
ment was not a democracy. It was a representative re-
public, and the system of representation was expressly
designed to take the settlement of specific affairs out of
the hands of the people. It was not the part of the
people to decide public questions, but to send " their
wisest men to make the public laws." Nowadays this
ideal condition has been lost. The people no longer
think of choosing their wisest m^ for any public purpose.
They try to choose those who wm do their bidding.

The daily newspaper and the telegraph carry to every
man's hand something c^j^e happenings of every day
the world over. On the\mlis of such partial information

A BLIND MANS HOLIDAY, I17

every man forms his own opinion on every subject. These
opinions for the most part are crude, prejudiced, and in-
complete ; but they serve as a basis for public action.
The common man's horizon is no longer bounded by the
affairs of the village, to be settled in town-meeting in ac-
cordance with the expectations of the fathers. He knows
something about all the affairs of state, and as local affairs
receive scant notice in the newspapers it is these which
he neglects and forgets. The town-meeting has decayed
through the growth of newspaper information, the intro-
duction of the voter to broader interests — interests less
vital no doubt to the average man but more potent to
affect his fancy.

Having opinions of his own, however crude, on all
public questions, the citizen demands that his represen-
tatives should carry out these opinions. If he has, or
thinks he has, a financial interest in any line of policy,
he will vote for men whose interests are the same as his.
In such manner Congress has become not an assembly
of " the wisest men to make the public laws," but a
gathering of attorneys, each pledged to some local or
corporate interest, and each doing his best, or appearing
to do it, to carry out lines of policy dictated by others.
This condition the fathers could not foresee. The tele-
graph and the newspaper have brought it about. It has
great disadvantages, but it cannot be helped and it is
with us to stay.

Because of this condition economists of a certain type
welcome all extensions of administrative functions. They
would prescribe a dose of Imperialism to stiffen the back
of our democracy. If we complicate the duties of
government, if we plunge into delicate and dangerous

Il8 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

foreign relations, our failures and humiliation will increase
the demand for skill. The business of horse-stealing
quickens a man's eye and improves his horsemanship.
In such fashion the business of land-grabbing improves
diplomacy. The old idea of representation by statesmen
unpledged to any line of action will arise again. The
choice of attorneys will be limited to local assemblies,
and real leaders of parties will come to the front.

Such a change England has seen since her aggressive
foreign policy forced upon her the need of eternal vigi-
lance. Such a change makes for better government at
the expense of popular choice. " This may not be re-
publicanism," say Lummis, speaking of the work of Diaz
in Mexico, " but it is business." The ruler of England
is not the people's choice nor the choice of the Queen.
He is the cleverest mouthpiece of the dominant oligarchy.

It is currently said that British imperial experiences
have caused the purification of British politics and the
expulsion from them of the spoils system. For this
statement there is no foundation in fact. It is through
the growth of individual intelligence in a compact homo-
geneous nation that higher political ideas have arisen.
It is through the pressure of money that waste of public
funds has been checked. The conquest of tropical
races has accompanied this, but has been in no degree
its cause. As well claim for colonial dominion that it
has abolished imprisonment for debt, as that it has
purified the civil service. On this important question
I present the following quotation from a paper of Dr.
George Elliott Howard, on "British Imperialism and
the Reform of the Civil Service."

* Published in the Political Science Quarterly, June, 1899.

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY, II9

" Distinguished teachers of political and social science
are asserting that besides the alleged economic and other
advantages sure to come from the adoption of a ' colonial '
policy by the United States, there will follow a purifica-
tion of our civil service, an elevation and regeneration
of our entire national administrative system. For ' re-
sponsibility,' we are assured, ' is a powerful moralizing
influence.' In proof of this doctrine the experience of
Great Britain is appealed to. At first, it is conceded,
there will undoubtedly be ' corruption and scandals ' in
our colonial governments ; but, continues Professor Gid-
dings, ' so far from despairing of the republic if we enter
into more complicated and more delicate relations to
world politics, we may rather anticipate that the change
will prove to be precisely what was needed, and that our
new responsibilities will operate more surely and more
continuously than any other influences to improve the
morale and the wisdom of American administration. In
this belief we are supported by the experience of British
Colonial government. As every student of history knows,
the age of Walpole was marked by corruption greater and
apparently more irremediable than any which we have
yet known in American political life. Who could have
predicted that, after a century of continuous territorial
expansion, with a correspondingly rapid multiplication
of official positions, the administrative side of British
government, instead of becoming hopelessly incapable
under the increasing strain, would have become the purest
and most nearly perfect mechanism thus far known in
political history? Have we, then, any right to despair
of our own experiment, under a similar broadening of
opportunities and responsibilities ? If we have, our esti-
9

I20 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

tnate of American character must be a sorry one.' Yet
compared with the colonial empire of Great Britain, the
territory and the population which we may be called upon
to administer is very small. Therefore, ' if the republi-
can form of government is to be undermined and des-
troyed in a nation of 70,000,000 of the most resourceful,
energetic and, all in all, conscientious human beings
that have yet lived upon this planet, under the strain
of devising and administering a workable territorial
government for outlying island possessions of such
modest dimensions as these, it would appear that our
estimate of the excellence and stability of republican
institutions must have been a grotesque exaggera-
tion.'*

"Already the argument of Professor Giddings that
wider responsibility will prove a great moral stimulant in
the regeneration of our domestic civil service, with
appeal to the alleged example of Great Britain, has be-
come a favorite one among American expansionists.
Some of them even go the length of declaring that Imper-
ialism has been almost the sole cause of the rise of the
admirable civil system of Great Britain. Yet, with sincere
respect for the candor and learning of the scholars who
have set up this theory — lot facts have not been forthcom-
ing, — it seems very clear that there has seldom been
committed a more dangerous perversion of history. In
the main, it is a striking illustration of the fallacy oipost
hoc ergo propter hoc ; though it would indeed be strange
if three centuries of British Imperialism, with its awful
mistakes, its colossal crimes, and its vast " successes,"

• Professor Franklin P. Giddings, American Imperialism.: in
Polit. Science Quarterly, December, 1898, p. 601-603.

A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY. 121

should not have afforded to society some useful
lessons.

" The fact is the purification of the British administra-
tive system has come as one of the results of moral and
social evolution. Whatever throughout the ages has
been the subtle and complex cause of the rise of a loftier
standard of social righteousness among the children of
men has contributed to this result. In other words, the
renovation of the British civil service has come as the»
gift of triumphant democracy. In political history, the
spirit of social righteousness and the democratic spirit
are so closely related that it is not always easy to say
which has been the cause and which the effect. For the
point under consideration, they are practically inter-
changeable terms.

" It is quite impossible in this short space even to touch
upon the many details, crowding the pages of English
social, economic, and constitutional history, which estab-
lish beyond question the view here presented. Only the
trend which a full inquiry would take can here be noted.
In the outset, it may be stated as morally certain, that
the rise of the British empire, beginning with the charter
of the East India Company in 1600 and the settlement
of the first permanent colony in America a few years
later, greatly favored the perpetuity of the ancient spoils
system, which had its source in the so-called ' prero-
gative' of the king. That patronage in Church and
State should be determined by favoritism and not by
merit was a matter of course in the Middle Ages. This
doctrine was lived up to by kings and prelates wjth
brutal frankness. It was sanctioned by the social
morality of the times. It was the morality of despotism,

122 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

which, though disguised, survived in England for eight
hundred years after the Conquest before it yielded to
the influence of democracy. ' To say that a man is en-
titled to an office simply because he is a man of worth
and capacity and not otherwise," says Eaton, 'is in
principle to say that he is entitled to become a knight,
a baron, a duke, or a king for the same reason — obviously
a principle as utterly repugnant to the theory of all
•arbitrary governments as it is essential to the prosperity
of a republic. Therefore the spoils system was the nat-
ural outgrowth of despotism and aristocracy. It is in its
very nature a royal and aristocratic and not a republican
agency of government.'*

" The medieval theory of patronage was in full force
at the beginning of the seventeenth century when the
foundations of the British empire were laid and James
Stuart, with his dogma of the 'divine prerogative,' as-
cended the English throne; for under the Tudors,
instead of reform, there was a corruption of the public
service, local and central, even deeper than had existed
since before the House of Lancaster came to power.
The rise of the new empire increased the value of the
royal prerogative because it increased the royal patron-
age. This is a fact of primary significance in account-
ing for the astonishing tenacity of the spoils system.
The new world was parceled out through the royal char-
ters ; and it was ruled in part ancj in varying degree by
the king's favorites. By the side of the old hereditary
privileged class arose a new privileged class, a bourgeoi-
sie or mercantile plutocracy, fattening itself on the spoils
of colonial and imperial trade, which was taking the-
* Eaton, Civil Strvice in Great Britain (N. V., iS8o), p. 40,

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 123

place of the 'monopolies' of the Elizabethan age.
This new privileged order became the ally of the despot-
ism which called it into being. It is true in fact that
the planting of the American colonies under commercial
charters by the three Stuarts gave a great opportunity to
democracy — ^but not in England. If the spirit of demo-
cracy became fierce in America, and the colonists en-
joyed the practical benefits of self-government, these
blessings were the result of their circumstances, of their
isolation, not of the beneficent purposes of the king.
According to the colonial theory, adopted by the Crown
and by Parliament, Englishmen who left the old home
to conquer a new one, to face the dangers and hard-
ships of the wilderness, became ipso facto an inferior
class of British subjects. Instead of being generously
treated, they were to be exploited for the benefit of
those who stayed at home, partly on the alleged ground
of exemption from imperial burdens. If they flourished,
it was because the king was too indifferent or too busy
to enforce his theory. Perhaps for the moment there
was in this course a positive advantage. The same big-
oted and pedantic James, who drove the Separatists to
Holland, was willing that they and the Puritans should
go to America and practise their beliefs. It will
scarcely be questioned that the withdrawal of so many
thousand sturdy enemies of prerogative to settle the New
England was a real gain to absolutism and gave a longer
lease of life to prerdgative and the spoils system. What
would have been the result had there been no empire
and had the Puritan and the Pilgrim been compelled to
cast in their lot with Cromwell? And a like question
must be asked again and again during the next two cen-

124 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

turies and a half as the empire expands and the most
courageous and enlightened children of Britain go forth
to seek their fortunes in every zone of the habitable
globe. Whatever compensations they or the world may
have gained by this process, it is certain that the social
movement at home would have been different had they
there remained. Is it not highly probable that the re-
sistance of prerogative to the rising tide of democracy
has been greatly protracted by it?

" It is coolly assumed by the advocates of the theory
under consideration that the bracing and broadening
effects of British expansion soon made themselves felt.
We get the impression that the character of English
domestic administration was affected by it in a reasona-
ble time ; as if the British experiment of empire were
something which might well be imitated by us as a
proper and rational means to an important end. Only
"at first," we are led to believe, may we expect to
find corruption in the management of our new empire ;
while at home, we infer, the evils of our present civil
service will presently disappear. Therefore we are ex-
pected to marvel that within a hundred years of Robert
Walpole British civil service rose from its lowest level of
corruption and inefficiency to a point of excellence never
anywhere attained in history before. In the first place,
it is well to remember that when the rule of Walpole
closed, England's colonial empire had already been in
existence nearly a century and a half ; and that if gov-
ernment under Walpole had actually reached an abyss
of cynical depravity, lower even than that which dis-
graced the reign of the Stuarts, the ia.ct, prima facie,
may well lead the observer to a very different conclu-

A BUND MAN S HOLIDAY. 1 25

sion from that which the expansionists have drawn.
One might be tempted off-hand to infer that, under the
stimulus of colonial empire, the royal prerogative had by
the time of Walpole brought the British civil service to
its nadir of abasement, from which, notwithstanding the
growth of democracy and general social culture, it has
required more than another century to raise it. Indeed
there is abundant evidence of the kind already suggested
to show that such an inference would not come far short
of the truth.

" It is very significant that a thorough reform in the
British civil service, either in India or at home, was not
effected until after the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury : two hundred and fifty years after the beginning of
the empire. Verily the mills of the gods grind slowly.
The lesson of moral discipline and responsibility was
slow in learning. Only in 1853 was the system of open
competitive examination of candidates for the India
service resolved upon; although some years earlier a
partial reform had taken place. In 1855 the new plan
was put in force. But the change came too late to pre-
vent the horrible Sepoy massacre of 1857, — the last
scene in the tragic history of the India Company whose
charter was surrendered in the following year. It was
in 1853, likewise, that the first step was taken towards
an effective reform in the method of choosing members
of the domestic civil service. A parliamentary commit-
tee made an inquiry into the state of the existing 'serv-
ice and recommended a system of open competitive
examinations. No action was taken by pariiament ; but
in 185s, by an order in council, a civil service commis-
sion was appointed, under whose direction all candidates

126 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

for junior positions in the departments were to be exam-
ined before they could receive a probationary appoint-
ment for six months. The order, however, did not
provide for "open" competition as recommended.
Only a limited number of candidates — in practise
three or more — could compete for each place; and
these were " nominated " by the heads of the different
offices. Thus "patronage was still permitted to have
full sway in the nomination of the candidates. Appoint-
ments might still be made for political and personal
reasons as freely as before. The only condition imposed
was that the nominee should obtain a certificate of quil-
ification from the civil service commission." * Yet the
experiment proved encouraging; and improvements
were made from time to time. But it was not until
1870 that patronage received its death-blow through the
adoption of the system of open competition. From the
fall of Ijord North onward many reforms in matters of
detail, both in the imperial and the domestic adminis-
tration, had been made. Bribery in particular and var-
ious forms of pecuniary corruption had been severely
checked. Still, in 1853, many years after parliamentary
and municipal, as well as many social and industrial,
reforms had been accomplished, the evils of patronage
were grave indeed. For the Indian service, the incom-
petent and the illiterate were "nominated" to compete
in the restricted examinations then in use. "In the
years 185 1 to 1854, both inclusive, 437 gentlemen
were examined for direct commission in the Indian
army; of this number 132 failed in English, and 234 in

* Graves (E. O.), How it was done in Great Britain : in Scrib-
ner's Monthly, Vol. XIV, p. 243.

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 1 27

Arithmetic. The return requires no comment." • There
was, in short, declares Eaton, " a hotbed of abuses pro-
lific of influences which caused the fearful outbreak of
1857." t Even more serious abuses existed in the do-
mestic service. { -_=?*c

" The reform of the British civil service beginning in
1853 appears clearly in the discussions of the times as
a democratic movement. It came as the gain of the
plain man at the expense of privilege, although some
members of the privileged classes were among its cham-
pions. It was distinctly regarded by its enemies as an-
other onslaught on the royal prerogative. A noble privy
councilor, after sneeringly declaring that ' the world we
live in is not . . . half moralized enough for the acceptance
of a scheme of such stern morality as this,' reveals his
true sentiment by exclaiming, ' why add another to the
many recent sacrifices of the royal prerogative ? ' § It
was a victory for social righteousness, under guidance
of the best thought and the most enlightened conscience
of England. Among its prominent supporters were
members of the universities, philosophers like John
Stuart Mill, and humanitarian scientists like Mill's
friend, the sanitary reformer, Edwin Chadwick, who
had advocated the system of open competitive exami-
nations as early as 1827. || It is instructive that trial of
this plan in the Indian servite, fifteen years before it
was possible to do so in the home administration, was

» Civil Service Papers, pp. 21-2 : cited by Eaton, p. 178.

t Eaton, Civil Service, 178.

J Civil Service Papers, pp. 21-2 : cited by Eaton, 189.

§ Eaton, Civil Service, 196-7.

II Molesworth, Hist, of England, III., 126-7.

128 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

largely due to the fact that prerogative had less at stake
while Indian offices were still nominally under the patron-
age of the Directors of the East India Company. The
"government," says Molesworth, "which would proba-
bly have strenuously resisted such an attempt to interfere
with its patronage in England, consented, without much
jeluctance, to a trial of the experiment in India.*

" In the days of the Missouri Compromise, well-mean-
ing proslavery expansionists, while yielding to the clamor
of the South for more territory, soothed their consciences
with the deceitful dream that, were importations of
foreign negroes cut off, the evils of American bondage
would be lessened by spreading it over the new lands of
the west. Even Clay and, in his old age, Jefferson were
beguiled by an illusion which has long since passed into
history as one of the most curious fallacies which politi-
cal casuistry has ever conceived. Yet the belief that
the evils of slavery could be mitigated by 'dilution'
bears a remarkable likeness to the theory of the modern
expansionists. We cannot get rid of the spoils system
by ' dilution ; ' by throwing open to partisan greed rich
and distant fields whose helpless inhabitants may not be
even partially protected from exploitation by the posses-
sion of the ballot. It is no doubt true, should we retain
Porto Rico and the Philippines, that American genius,
energy, and courage will in the end solve the problem
of giving them fairly good government. Nor will it be
wise to assume that even in the outset American admin-
istration would be marked by the rapacity of a Clive or
a Hastings. But, considering the present state of
American political ethics, new and sinister glimpses of
* Molesworth, //ist. of Eng., III., 126 7.

A BLIND MAN S HOLIDAY. 1 29

which have recently been revealed in the war investiga-
tion scandals, we are forced to believe that frightful
abuses in the management of our ' Colonies,' would
follow and that a new lease of life would be given to
mal-administration at home.

"Moreover, if we 'are to read the lesson of British
Imperialism aright, it is needful to avoid another common
and alluring fallacy. Doubtless all human experience is
in some way profitable to the race. Social crime and
social virtue may each in the end confer a social benefit.
It by no means follows, however, for the sake of the
lesson, that crime and virtue are alike to be imitated.
Doubtless, as Professor Giddings reminds us, all '.great
national or social changes have come in obedience to
historic forces and are as inevitable as a hurricane or
the change of the seasons. Doubtless vast social move=
ments, great national policies, the rise and fall of em-
pires, regardless of the sufferings and the crimes which
may attend them, are in harmony with the law of ' social
struggle,' and their ultimate results the ' survival of the
fittest.' It does not follow, however, that 'artificial
selection ' on the part of self-conscious society should
imitate the methods of cosmic evolution. It may be
that Attila or Jenghiz Khan with their Tartar hordes
taught the Aryan men of Christian Europe some lessons
— especially that of unity — which they sorely needed to
learn. Still, the modern moralist will scarcely prescribe
the 'Scourge of God' to cure similar ills in existing
society. It may be also, as Bishop Stubbs suggests, that
the Norman Duke ' forced out ' the latent energies of
the English race, stimulated the sense of liberty and
nationaUty, and by rough discipline whipped the native

I30 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

populations into shape to preserve and develop all that
was good in English institutions ; and it may be that Na-
poleon, that ' heaven-sent law-giver from Corsica,' was
just the cosmic force needed to free Europe from the
bondage of feudal privilege and prerogative. Still, a
democratic American will scarcely commend either
William or Bonaparte as a social missionary. One may
concede that a reactionary George III was needed to
force the American colonists into united action, to mold
the feeble spirit of resistance to administrative abuses
into a national sentiment of independence, in order that
the American republic might be born. Still, it here is a
lesson for imitation, it is a lesson for the Filipinos and
not for us. It may be that Canada, New Zealand, and
the other free, self-governing colonies dominated by men
of English blood, are the splendid product of the im-
perial expansion of England. But we must not forget
that the existing liberal colonial policy of Great Britain
came only after she tasted the bitter fruit of the Ameri-
can revolution.* It is indeed true, as John Fiske insists,
fhat the battle of Yorktown was in the end a victory for
democracy on both sides the sea. The old mercantile
or restrictive system was doomed — though it died very
hard. Reforms were set on foot by Pitt and Burke
which might have anticipated the reform bill of 1832 by
half a century, had not the panic caused by the French
revolution drawn away the energy of the nation into the
struggle with Napoleon: thus fostering into renewed
vigor the spirit of militarism and the thirst for conquest
— the twin vices of imperialism — and gaining a respite for

* See especially Sir George Trevelyan, The American Revolu-
Hm, Part I. (N. J., 1899).

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 13I

prerogative in its deadly struggle with democracy. Yet
the effect of the successful revolt of the American colo-
nies did not at once lead to the grant of political liberty,
of responsible self-government, to those which re-
mained loyal. On the contrary a strict paternalism was
adopted as a policy. ' Politically the Colonies were no
longer to be treated "with salutary neglect." They
were to be watched, that the first signs of discontent
might be crushed, and a repetition of the American
disaster prevented.' * Commercially a system was set
up which has been happily called a system of ' recip-
rocity in advantage.' f A differential tariff actually
gave the Canadian and the other northern colonists an
advantage at the expense of the London consumer;
while, on the other hand, England retained a monopoly
of the colonial trade, giving her a theoretical but not a
real advantage for it would naturally have come to
her without governmental interference. Against both
elements of this illogical system the English reformers
arose, and, after more than fifty years ' struggle, gained
a complete victory. Now, it is a remarkable proof of
the view here presented as to the influence of the colonial
empire on the domestic civil service, that these refor-
mers resisted the new paternalism, because ' they found
that the patronage which the home government controlled
in the Colonies was one of the principal causes of cor-
ruption in England. To abolish the colonial patronage
was to weaken the government at home ; and the struggle
for colonial constitutional government was a part of the

• Davidson, England and her Colonies, 1783-1897 ; in Polit.
Science Quarterly, March, 1899, pp. 42-3.
t By Professor Davidson, Op. cii., p. 51.

132 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

general struggle for political freedom. From the time
of Fox onwards, there is a continuous protest against the
tyranny of the political system in the Colonies ; and the
protest was the more vigorous, because the system
seemed to exist solely for the benefit of the place-hun-
ters.' • "

" Let us beware how we misread the lesson of British
imperialism, and especially that part of it afforded by the
American revolution ; lest, to our shame in the eyes of
the nations, some dusky Patrick Henry of the tropics
arise to teach us its true moral." (George Eixiott
Howard.)

In the British system, the Parliament of the people is
behind the Premier, who can act as freely, as boldly and
as quickly as he dare. In the Federal system, the Con-
gress of the people stands first and the President acts
behind them and by their permission. Only in time of
war are these conditions reversed and then only partially.
For this reason the severe blame visited on the President
for failure to declare any tangible policy in regard to the
Philippines is only partially deserved.
■* A movement toward the British system would require
changes in the Constitution, a movement toward further
centralization and toward greater party responsibility.
This its advocates usually recognize. " It may not be
republicanism, but it is business." Such a change, it is
maintained, would soon do away with our poisonous and
shameful spoils system. It would insure strong, sound,
and dignified party administration, because anything
short of this would ruin party or country. Under such
conditions no place-hunter could hold a seat in our
* Davidson, O/. Ctt., p. 44.

A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY. 1 33

cabinets, no weakling could thrust himself foiward in
our civil service, and our Presidents would be men
who would make public opinion, never supinely wait for
it, still less accept its vulgar counterfeit of mob opinion.

With such conditions in the Executive, and an au-
tomatic, persistent, competent colonial service, with army
and navy to match, we could dictate to the whole earth.
We could have our hand in the affairs of all nations, and
the diplomacy of all the world would tremble at our
frown.

All this in its essence, it is claimed, is to return to the
ideals of the fathers before Jackson's vulgarity corrupted
our civil service, and before Lincoln's "bath of the
people" led the common man to regard himself as the
main factor in our government. " Of the people, by the
people," were Lincoln's additions. The right word is
" Government for the people," and by those who know
better than the people how the people should be gov-
erned.

In this vein we are told that the people have been
"debauched by freedom." They have come to fear the
bugaboo of too much government, too much army. Be-
cause we are "debauched by freedom" we have lost our
respect for authority, our respect for law.

Some of our historians now assure us that 'government
by the consent of the governed was only a catch-phrase.
We never meant what we said when we took these glit-
tering generalities from the philosophers of France. We
governed our Louisiana territory just as we pleased with
these phrases in our mouths, asking no advice of the
French Creoles. We never sought consent of the Indian.
We override the will of the negro even yet. His vote

134 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

is only a farce. We have never even asked our women,
half our whole number, whether they consent to our
government or not. All of this is petty quibbling. These
exceptions only prove the rule. The principle holds in
spite of temporary failures justified by local conditions or
not justified at all. So far as women are concerned it
is still, right or wrong, the theory of most civilized gov-
ernments, ours with the rest, that women have no gov-
ernmental interests at variance with those of men. They
consent tacitly but constantly to be represented by their
fathers, brothers, or husbands. Doubtless this condition
is not eternal, but it exists at present, and no one can
claim that " consent of the governed " is reached only
by a formal vote.

As to this Lincoln once said : — " The framers of the
Declaration of Independence meant to set up a standard
maxim for free society which should be familiar to all, and
revered by all, constantly looked to, constantly labored for,
even, though never perfectly attained, constantly approxi-
mated, and thereby constantly deepening its influence, and
augmenting the happiness and value of life to all peoples
of all colors everywhere." One year later, speaking at
Philadelphia, he said that he would " rather be assassi-
nated on the spot than to act in the view, that the coun-
try could be saved by giving up the principles of the
Declaration of Independence."

"Our own country," says Lowell,' in the name of
Homer Wilbur, " is bounded on the north and the south,
on the east and the west by justice, and where she over-
steps these invisible bounds, even so much as by a hair's
breadth, she ceases to be our mother." Inside these
boundaries our flag is the banner of freedom ; outside it

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 1 35

is the Standard of the pirate. Whether on a stolen
guano Mexican island or on a sugar plantation wrenched
or bought from Spain, its truest friends shall be the first
to haul it down.

Doubtless the imperialists are partly in the right.
It is certain that the formation of a colonial bureau and
a foreign bureau wholly outside of popular control would
make, for the time at least, for better government and
stronger administration. Doubtless needs like those of
England will hasten British methods of meeting them.
But government for the people and not of them has its
weakness as well as its strength. The strength of de-
mocracy lies not in its apparent force. It lies latent,
to be drawn on in times of great need.

Because of its latent power our great blundering
democracy, slow in war and simple or clumsy in diplo-
macy, is strong above all other nations. It can safely
try civic experiments the very thought of which, if,
taken seriously, would throw all Europe into convulsions.
The imperial government is a swift express train which
will run with great speed on a proper track but which
is involved in utter ruin by a moment's slip of misman-
agement. The republic is an array of lumbering farm
wagons, not so swift nor so strong, but infinitely more
adaptable, the only thing you can use on a farm.

The strength of democratic institutions is that without
the intelligent consent of those affected by them they
will not work at all. All permanent government rests on
acquiescence of- the people, but democracy demands
more. It insists on their positive action.

The strength of empire, however disguised, lies in
brute force and that alone. That of democracy lies in

136 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

the self-control and the self-respect of its individual citi-
zens. The work of Great Britain through the centuries
has been to teach its people and its vassals the lesson of
respect of law. It has been the mission of the United
States to teach respect of manhood, a matter vastly
more difficult as well as more important.

A nation self-governed is the most powerful of all
nations, because she is at peace within herself and being
sound at heart she has taken the first step toward good
government, a step by which the best government pos-
sible to men must be reached in time. Even the
blunders and corruptions of democracy make for good
government at last. When the people find out what hurts
them, that particular wrong must cease. Even the
spoils system with all its waste and shame has its educa-
cative value, and tremendous will be the educative value
of the process by which it is at last thrown off. The re-
action from the conquest of Luzon will save us from Im-
periaUsm for the next fifty years.

Democracy is always wiser than it seems. The com-
mon politician knows the weaknesses of the people and
tries to profit by them. The true statesiiian knows the
strength of the people and tries to lead it, and the re-
sults he attains are the marvel of the world. Such a
leader of the people was Lincoln. He could touch the
noblest springs in our national character. Such leaders
will rise when occasion shall demand them. Mean-
while, the men are not wanting. Sound common sense
and devoted patriotism are needed in all walks in
life and are found there. The froth on the waves
may fill our public offices, but the great deep is below
them.

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 1 37

" Are all the common ones so grand,
And all the titled ones so mean ? "

was asked in 1 863 of the Army of the Potomac. "The com-
mon men so grand," though all the titled ones be mean, is
the experience of all democracy. It is far better and far
safer than the reverse condition when only titled men
are great and all the common men are mean. Such
nations are like inverted pyramids resting on the strength
of one man.

For a nation to be ruled by leaders may be considered
as a survival of primitive conditions, when there was no
politics save war. Then all men were warriors and the
tribes were but an array with a camp-following of women,
children, and civilians.

When militarism gives away to industrialism we have
the rise of the individual man at the expense of
the relative standing of his leaders ; for leadership is
necessary only as collective danger threatens. The
rulers are transformed from leaders to agents. These
are at first under democracy responsible to self-consti-
tuted managers, demagogues, and bosses who usurp con-
trol when no imminence of danger forces the necessity
of strong leadership.

From this transition stage, democracy must pass on
to settled institutions and good service. In the stage
which comes next, the intelligent citizen shall be the
unit and head of political affairs with servants elected,
appointed, or chosen by competitive examinations to do
his bidding and carry out his will. " The citizen is at
the head," says Walt Whitman, and President, Congress
and courts " are but his servants for pay." The de-

138 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

cay of leadership must accompany the rise of the in-
dividual man.

Let us assume by way of illustration a few impossible
things. Let us suppose that the Emperor of Germany
should die suddenly, and with him should disappear the
whole royal family, the army, the judiciary, and all
others in power with all the force over which they have
control. Who can say what would happen next? Can
we even guess at the map of the next new Germany? —
for the German Empire has no strength in itself. It is
strong in battle because it owns millions of fighting men.
It has little strength in the hearts of the people. The
failure of the force of arms even for a day might mark
the end of the German Empire.

On even frailer basis rests the Republic of France.
Could such fortune befall her as the loss of her
army and all others in power, no one could foretell her
protean changes. If, perchance, the scepter fell into
the hands of the people, the new Republic of France
would be very different from any she has ever yet seen.

If in Great Britain the same change could take place
what should we see? If every official of whatever
grade, all the army, and all the navy were swallowed in
the sea, can we forecast the result?

Evidently in England herself no great change would
arise. Respect for law and respect for tradition are
firmly ingrained in the English character. What had
been would be established again, and the common-
wealth of England would lose not a whit of its power or
stability. But what of the British Empire? Its
scattered fragments could never be collected again. Ire-
land, held by force, would go in her own way, and the

A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY. 1 39

different factions would again repel one another. Self-
government for Ireland means disunion of the Empire,
and this the English statesmen know too well. India is
no nearer England to-day than she Was a hundred years
ago. There is not one of her vassal nations which would
not escape if it could. There is not one whose presence
does not weaken the British Empire. Shrewd admin-
istration has learned to count on this and to find out
compensating advantages. A Vast business on a small
capital is the type of British dominion. No wonder
England cherishes her relation to Canada and Australia,
elder children of hers, who give her moral help but who
take care of themselves. England dare not release Ire-
land from federal union, because only as a helpless mino-
rity can Ireland be controlled. On the other hand, she
dare not admit the rest of the empire to the same feder-
ation lest she be thrown into the minority herself.
Sooner or later both these questions will become burn-
ing ones. When they are solved Great Britain will be
no longer an empire.

" Gladly," says Dr. Woolsey, " would Great Britain
limit her responsibilities if she could ; but it would be
construed as a sign of weakness, and she fears the conse-
quences. She cannot let go." " Imperial expansion,"
says Frederick Harrison, speaking of conditions in Eng-
land, "means domestic stagnation. It swallowed the
energies of Liberalism and bartered progress for glory."
The fabric of Imperialism, whatever its form, is built in
shifting sands. The only solid foundation for any gov-
ernment is " the consent of the governed," and here
lies the strength of the United States, the soundest gov-
ernment on the face of the earth. Not the wisest, not

140 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

the most economical, most dignified, or most just, but
the firmest in its basis, andj therefore, the most endur-
ing.

At the close of the Civil War, when more than ever
before in its history the nation was dependent on a single
man, and he the wisest, bravest, tenderest of all, Lincoln
was murdered. The land was filled with sorrow and dis-
tress, but there was no alarm in our body politic. It was
left to Lincoln, says Brownell,

" Even in death, to give

This token for freedom's strife,

A proof how republics live,
Not by a single life.

But the right divine of man

The million trained to be free."

Our government would have endured, even in that
troubled time, had every official of every state fallen with
Lincoln.

Should our whole body of officers, our army, our navy,
perish to-morrow, all would go on as before. Some
veteran of the Civil War, or some schoolmaster, perhaps,
would take the chair and call the people to order. The
machinery of democracy would be started, and, once
started, would proceed in its usual way. We should not
have Cuba nor the Philippines, but we should retain all
that was worth keeping. This stability of administration
would not arise from our respect for law. That feehng
is none too strong in our "fierce democracy." Still
less would it spring from respect for tradition. We don't
care a continental for tradition. We should act on the
common-sense of the common man. To cultivate this
common-sense is the chief mission of democracy. In

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. I4I

this it is effective, and for that reason, our Republic is
the strongest and soundest government under heaven.

" I have yet to learn," * says John Brown, " that God is
a respecter of persons." There is " God in our Constitu-
tion," not in name, but in fact, for by it " all men are
equal before the law," which " is no respecter of persons."
Men are men, whether white or black or brown or yellow.
The British government rests on a foundation of inequality.
Its rewards are titles of nobility, which imply that the
plain man is ignoble. The word law is written on its
every page; the word justice occurs only as between
equals. Neither the word nor the idea of justice as
resting on human equality before the law finds place in
England's dealing with other nations.

"How long will the United States endure ? " Guizot
once asked of James Russell Lowell. " So long as the
ideas of its founders remain dominant," was his answer.
Just so long as her government rests on the intelligent
" consent of the governed." When it rests in part on
force, no matter how wisely appUed, in so far will it be /
unstable. A standing army contains the seeds of decay «'
As militarism grows democracy must die. But withoue
the constant pressure of force of arms, law and order and

s

* " I think, my friends, you are guilty of a great wrong against
God and humanity, and it would be perfectly right for any one to
interfere with you so far as to set loose those you wilfully and
wickedly hold in bondage. I have yet to learn that God is a
respecter of persons.

" I pity the poor in bondage who have none to help them :
that is why I am here. ... It is my sympathy with the oppressed
and the wronged that are as good as you are and as precious in
the sight of God." (John Brown, at Harper's Ferry : speaking
from the floor of the Armory)-.

142 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

industry have never in any high degree existed in the
tropics. Mexico to-day is a land of law and order, but
the soldier is everywhere. Every railway train in the Re-
public carries at least three rurales, or national guards-
men. Every flag station has two or three, and every con-
siderable town has its battalion or its regiment. These
soldiers are drawn from the body of the people ; very
many of them are ex-brigands, reformed to the higher use
of the enforcement of law. " This may not be republi-
canism, but it is business." The conditions of law and
order in the Philippines are just the same. You may
use native soldiers if you like, but without force order
cannot exist.

The cost of this whole business may be urged as an
argument against annexation. It will appeal to our peo-
ple as the discussion of the bill for the enlargement of
the army plainly shows. The financial statements of
Congress have proved the strongest arguments against
persistency in folly. It is clearly evident that the cost
of conquest or even military occupation of the Philip-
pines is far in excess of any possible gain to the govern-
ment. The whole trade of the islands for five years, if we
get all of it, would not pay for a second-class battle-ship.
People who live in straw houses do not make inter-
national trade. We may open the way for individuals
and corporations to grow rich, but the people can never
get their money back.

No possible development of the islands can profit the
people at large. There are no openings in the tropics
for the small farmer, none for the American laborer, and
in general none for any of the rank and file of the
American people ; nor can any be made by any act of

A BLIND MAN S HOLIDAY. I43

ours. We cannot alter the conditions of life in the Orient.
The question of flag, other things being equal, affects
neither commerce nor industry. Trade never " follows
the flag " because it is a flag. Trade " flies through the
open door " because it is a door. Men buy or sell wher-
ever they can make money.

The whole argument that the needs of our commerce
demand the occupation of the Philippine archipelago is
both fallacious and immoral. It is untrue in the first
place, and unworthy in the second. The needs of
commerce demand no act of injustice and they excuse
none. The total cost of maintenance of our proposed
government in the Philippines cannot fall short of
^10,000,000 per year, and may be far greater. Our
actual trade with the islands now amounts to less than
$500,000 per year, imports and exports together, and
the whole trade of the Philippines with all the world is
less than $30,000,000. No form of government could
increase this much, and, under republican forms it might
fall off. The less compulsion, the less labor. Allowing
a net profit of ten per cent on all transactions, a com-
plete monopoly of Philippine trade would leave the
people a debt of seven millions for every three millions
our trading companies might gain. In time, perhaps, the
outlook would be less unequal. Trade might increase,
expenses grow less, but in no conceivable event would
the people get their money back. The returns either
in money or civilization would always be below their cost.
The argument for commercial expansion has its roots in
our experience of booming towns and has no value with
careful financiers. The whole trade of all the tropics
will, at the best, be but a trifling part of the commerce

144 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY,

of the world. Certain drugs, dyes, and fruits, mainly
natural products, with sugar, tobacco, coffee, and tea
make almost the whole of it.

Yet it is true that commercial imperialism might pay
if we were free to act as England would with her wisdom,
her experience, and her selfishness ; but only on a vast
and generous scale, considering commercial results only,
could we make her policy effective. The function of the
British army and navy in these days is not glory nor
dominion. It is to clear away the barriers to trade.
When England subjugates a nation she lets it alone as
much as she can. Interference means waste of men
and money. She never meddles with the religion nor
the form of government of her vassals. The people
may choose king, or president, or sultan, and each may
conduct his own court in his own way, with all the gold-
lace and peacock-feathers that his barbaric taste may
I demand. England does not care for this. On her coat-
|0f-arms are these three words only, VOLUME OF
(TRADE.

All that England now asks of the nations she calls
colonies is this, and this she gets, that there shall be
law and order, and all doors wide open to the commerce
of all the world. So long as other nations keep closed
doors at home, England can undersell them in the
markets of the world. Imperialism, then, as Lord Beres-
ford truthfully insists, means with England simply this.
Volume of Trade. All the rest is mere flummery. The
sole purpose of the British navy, accident aside, is to
hold the doors of the world open to British merchant
ships. Except as an adjunct to an open door of com-
merce all foreign possessions are costly and ruinous folly.

A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY. I4S

The maintenance of Algiers, Madagascar and the Indo-
China as tariff-bound colonies for Frenchmen to exploit
has wrought the financial ruin of France. The militarism
these follies made necessary has wrought her civic ruin.
But with Great Britain army and navy are but adjuncts
used with marvelous skill toward one great purpose,
Volume of Trade.

The United States cannot be thus turned into a vast
machine for helping its manufacturers and merchants.
She has many other interests, and the greatest are educa-
tional and moral. To drop all these and plunge into the
promotion of commerce she must cast aside all the checks
and balances of her Constitution and to stand unham-
pered, just as England stands.

The British Government acts on the instant. Its only
limitation is the confidence of the people. So long as
it holds this by success there is no restraint on its
achievements. One doubt or failure throws the power
into the hands of the opposing party. This forces to the
front the cleverest and strongest men in all England.
It forbids incompetence in every branch of government.

Our government is not an organism which can think
and act as a unit. It is simply the reflex of the people
themselves ; the mirror of the mass, with all its crudities
and inconsistencies. It exists for the purpose of exalt-
ing men, not for developing industry or swelling the
volume of trade. The British flag extends the trade of
England because it insures local peace and clears away
the rubbish of tariff which obstructs traffic. The Dutch
flag helps the trade of Holland because it means
enforced industrialism, slavery that pays its way. The
American flag, outside of America, as yet means nothing ;

146 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

neither greater industry nor freer commerce, new yet in-
creased observance of law. To plant it anywhere can-
not help our trade.

If we were to follow in England's footsteps, let us see
what we should have done. Let us begin with the war
for Cuban freedom, though with England in our place
there would have been no war. She would have found a
way of saving Cuba for herself without humiliating
Spain.

But the war once begun would have been pushed on
business principles. Our navy shows the British method.
Our army suggests the methods of Spain. Great Britain
would have no scandal in her army because she would
have no politicians there. There would have been no
officials not trained to the profession j no colonels who
had not earned their promotion by success. Severe
training and faithful service give military precedence in
England. Political services or favor of the Minister
do not count. Faithful men find their reward in
titles of nobility. In England, political scheming in army
or navy or civil service alike stands on the plane of
forgery or counterfeiting. The nation could not endure
it and live.

The war once finished, peace would be made with the
blade of the sword. No civil commission would be sent
to wrangle over the details. They would be settled on
the instant. Spain would be given a day to relinquish
whatever England wanted, and England would speak her
wishes in no uncertain tones. What England would do
with these possessions is evident enough. She would put
down rioting and brigandage, and she would employ the
native soldiery to do it. She would press the strongest

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. I47

leaders into her service, humoring their vanity with titles
and making her interests their own. She would let the
people form whatever government their fancy chose,
with only this limitation, all factions must keep the peace.
To show what peace means she might knock down a
fortress or two, or blow a few hundred rebels from her
guns for an object lesson to the rest.

All this in England's case would have taken place long
ago with the sinking of the navies of her foes, and once
accomplished the door of commerce would be flung open
to all the world. All this has its glories, it may be its
advantages, and we have men enough who, with force in
hand, could carry out its every detail. But it could not
be done under our Constitution, nor under our relation
of parties, nor under the administration now at the head
of our affairs. To pause in its accomplishment would be
fatal. To hesitate is to fail, and our opportunity, such
as it was, as well as our imperial prestige, was lost when
we made the leaders of the Filipinos our enemies.

"If ever," says Dr. William James, "there was a
situation to be handled psychologically, it was this
one. The first thing that any European government
would have done would have been to approach it from
the psychological side : Ascertain the sentiments of
the natives and the ideals they might be led by, get
into touch immediately with Aguinaldo, contract some
partnership, buy his help by giving ours, etc. Had our
officers on the ground been allowed to follow their own
common sense and good feeling, they would probably
have done just this. Meanwhile, as they were forbidden
by orders from Washington no one knows what they would
have done.

148 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

" But it is obvious that for our rulers at Washington
the Filipinos have not existed as psychological quantities
at all, except so far as they might be moved by President
McKinley's proclamation. * * * When General Miller
cables that they won't let him land at Iloilo, the Presi-
dent, we are told, cables back : ' Cannot my proclama-
tion be distributed? ' But apart from this fine piece of
sympathetic insight into foreigners' minds there is no
clear sign of its ever having occurred to anyone at
Washington that the Filipinos could have any feelings or
insides of their own whatever, that might possibly need
to be considered in our arrangements. It was merely a
big material corporation against a small one, the • soul '
of the big one consisting in a stock of moral phrases, the
little one owning no soul at all.

" In short we have treated the Filipinos as if they were
a painted picture, an amount of mere matter in our
way. They are too remote from us ever to be realized
as they exist in their inwardness. They are too far
away ; and they will remain too far away to the end of
the chapter. If the first step is such a criminal blunder,
what shall we expect of the last? "

In grim and graphic fashion the clear-sighted editor
of the San Francisco Argonaut sets forth the lines on
which we may succeed in our schemes of conquest.

" If we persevere in our imperialistic plans, we shall have to
rely upon native troops, for the reason that we cannot get Amer-
icans. It is becoming more and more apparent that the youth
of America will not volunteer for regular service in the tropics.
We shall have to adopt the same methods pursued by European
colonial powers, if we continue in our imperialistic groove. We
shall have to lay aside a great many scruples to which we now
cling.

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. - I49

" For example, in the Philippines we may have to adopt Span-
ish methods in many ways. We may find it necessary to stir up
one tribe of natives against another. Thus we could arm the
Visayans, drill them, and ship them to Luzon. The Visayans
hate the Tagalos, and we could set the two tribes to fighting to-
gether, and with the Visayans we might exterminate the Tagalos.
Then, after the Tagalos were exterminated or subjected, we
could stir up the fierce Moros of Mindanao against the Visayans.
By judiciously fomenting strife we could exterminate the Visay-
ans. There would then remain only the Moros, and probably
we could get away with them ourselves.

" Here is another suggestion. The Spaniards have always
found it necessary to use treachery, torture, and bribery in the
Philippines. We shall probably have to do the same. The
Anglo-Saxon methods of warfare do not appeal to the Malay. In
pursuance of our imperialistic plans, it would be well to hire
some of the insurgent lieutenants to betray Aguinaldo and other
chieftains into our clutches. A little bribery, a little treachery,
and a little ambuscading, and we could trap Aguinaldo and his
chieftains. Then, instead of putting them to death in the ordi-
nary way, it might be well to torture them. The Spaniards have
left behind them some means to that end in the dungeons in
Manila. The rack, the thumbscrew, the trial by fire, the trial by
molten lead, boiling insurgents alive, crushing their bones in in-
genious mechanisms of torture — these are some of the methods
that would impress the Malay mind. It would show them that
we are in earnest. Ordinary, decent, christian, and civilized
methods, such as the United States have always pursued in war-
fare, will only lead them to believe that we are weaklings and
cowards, and that we are therefore to be steadily and sturdily
combated.

"This may seem to some of the more sentimental of our
readers like grim jesting. It is not. It is grim earnest. We
assure them that the Malay race can be ruled only by terror.
The Dutch can tell us a little about that from their experiences
in Java. If there be a belief throughout the United States that
these mediaeval methods are unfitted for us, th^n we shall have
to retire from attempting to manage Malays. Malays are more
than mediaeval. They hark back to the old, cruel days of prime-

ISO IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

val mar.. They are primeval rather than medixval, and if we
want to manage Malays, we will have to do it in such ways that
mere murder would be kindness."

Others say that China is soon to be looted by the powers
of Europe. We wish to be on hand in the center of the
fight to get a share of her land and trade. " I held the
enemy down," said brave John Phcenix at San Diego,
" with my nose, which I inserted between his teeth for
that purpose." The vultures are already at the huge
Mongolian carcass. Let the Eagle of Freedom join his
fellow buzzards till his belly is full. Too proud to attack
for ourselves, we will be close at hand to seize whatever
the others may drop in the scramble. Why not? If we
do not enter the straggle, they " will forever shut us out
of the trade of China." But is this trae ? Trade
demands customers, and China will never have a better
customer than the United States. To shut out anybody
shuts out trade, and the wrangling powers will bid for
our markets, even if we leave to them the cost, the waste
and the shame of the spoliation of China. To secure
our share of the China trade we have only to be ready
with something to exchange and ships to carry it. No
nation can afford to subjugate China or to hold any large
part of it under military force. The sphere of influence
is the open door. We have only to meet the open door
with open door. To hold the Philippines will not make
our commerce. Annex them and we shall be just as far
from the goal as before. Bind them with our tariffs
and we shall leave them practically no commerce at all.
In any case, beyond the conveniences of a coaling
station they do not enter into the Chinese question to
^ny visible degree.

A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY. 151

The argument that annexation is a violation of our
Constitution does not impress me as conclusive. The
Constitution is an agreement to secure justice and
prudence in our internal affairs. Its validity is between
state and state, and between man and man. The hope
of this country lies in the intelligence, morality and
virility of its people, not in the wisdom of its leaders,
still less in the perfections of its Constitution. Consti-
tutions are mere paper at best, unless they rest on the
consent of the governed ; unless the principles they rep-
resent are ingrained deep in the hearts of the people.
If the United States is a nation, she holds all national
prerogatives. As a nation she may do whatever she
chooses, if no other power prevents. The Constitution
cannot test the wisdom of an action. She may annex
barbarous countries, make war on the universe, or do
any other wicked or foolish thing, if the decision to do
so keeps within proper forms of law. If, however, the
Constitution offers an effective barrier against folly we
shall soon find it out. We may be sure that no weapon
against Imperialism will be left unused. Whether the
letter of the Constitution forbids the acquisition of vassal
provinces and rotten boroughs is an open question.
But there is no question that the spirit is opposed to
both. Had such conditions been foreseen, the annex-
ation of either would doubtless have been formally for-
bidden.

I do not myself believe that the annexation of the
Philippines will prove fatal to our Constitution or fatal to
democracy. It will be endlessly mischievous, but it will
not kill. The only poison that can kill is personal corrup-
tion, the moral rottenness of our people.. The govern-

152 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

ment by the people has wondrous vitality, and it has al-
ready survived gigantic crimes. It has outlived the
monstrous blunder of secession and the headless spasms
of "organized labor." It will outlive the aftermath of
this war with Spain. " You cannot fool all the people
all the time." This epigram of Lincoln's expresses the
final strength of democracy. When the craze of the day
has subsided, and we have counted our loss in blood and
treasure, we shall "walk backward with averted gaze to
hide our shame." May this shame be enduring, for it is
our guarantee that we shall not do the like again.

Of late the argument of annexation assumes a differ-
ent form. It is justified because it is inevitable. Let us
enter the movement to rule it. Some of our ablest
students of political affairs argue in this fashion. The
treaty with Spain is sure to be ratified. The Philippines
will be ceded to the United States. Cession compels
annexation. We are in the current — not of divine Prov-
idence nor of abstract destiny, but of inevitable public
opinion. It is no more use to struggle against this than
against winds and tides. " The King can do no wrong."
All the prestige of power is with the administration.
The American people are bent upon keeping all the ter-
ritory won from Spain. It is all a great joke with them,
and they will never stop to look at the thing seriously.
The one-sided, freakish and chivalrous war has intensified
the humor of the situation. As well argue against a
cyclone as against a national movement. The American
people are fearless and determined. They go ahead to
the aim in view, and can take no backward step. They
have solved many difficulties in the past by sheer head-
long obstinacy. They will solve these difficulties in the

A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY. I S3

same fashion. Let us join the procession. Let us not
cheapen our influence by mugwumpery, but accept the
inevitable, step to the front as leaders and handle the
movement as best we can. Especially, they tell us, we
must seize the occasion to emphasize the value of wise
methods, and, above all, the vital needs of thorough
civil service reform.

But civil service reform is the special abhorrence of
most of the leaders in the movement for annexation.
The petty offices the Philippines promise are the basis
of half their influence. The promises of the men in
power lavishly scattered before nomination as before elec-
tion are still far in excess of their fulfilment. Because
of these outstanding promises our volunteer army has
been cheapened and disgraced. Is there any promise of
better things when civil rule in the islands shall succeed
martial law and the natives are turned over to " amateur
experimenters in colonial administration ? "

As a matter of fact we know that the pressure of the
spoilsman has been and is greater than most presidents
can resist. The appointment of civil officials in the
Philippines means the carnival of the spoilsmen. The
United States must prepare itself for scandal and corrup-
tion in greater measure than it has ever yet known. Al-
ready such scandals are ripening at Manila, if we may
trust the guarded language of our volunteer soldiers.
The universities of California have more than one
hundred men in the ranks at Manila to-day, men of
culture and education, volunteers who rushed forward
at the call of their country. Over these men are some
officers brave and manly, a few of them even trained
for their business. But the officers placed in authority

154 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

over our patriotic soldiers are not always gentlemen. Too
many of them are men to whom in civil life these same
volunteers would not entrust their dogs. Had our
volunteers been sent to Cuba or Manila with only
corporals chosen by themselves and not an oflScer of
staif or line, brave as most of the latter were, they
would have made as good a record as is shown to-day.
Officers competent to lead, willing to share privations,
could accomplish anything with these soldiers. The
tinsel sons of politicians were an insult to patriotism.
The feeling of the volunteer army to-day is that of men
insulted on every side. Compare this with the feelings
of the men who came home from Appomattox in 1865 j
and the difference is not in the soldiers ; it is the work
of the spoilsman.

The American soldier will gladly suffer every hardship
necessary in the work on which his country sends him.
Under real officers, men whose special training makes
their orders effective, men who are not afraid to live or
die in his company, he will face every danger. But he
will not willingly endure imposed hardships which serve
no purpose and which he thinks due to carelessness or
greed, nor serve under pasteboard officers who riot in
luxury while he rots in the swamps.

Very soon the preacher, the economist, and the poli-
tician who now work together for expansion shall part
company. The politician does not enter the Philip-
pines to convert the heathen — unless, indeed, he can,
convert them into coin. He is there for the same rea-
son that the Spaniards were, what he can make out of
it. He has shown no signs of repentance in the matter
of spoils. He has not joined the economist in devising

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 1 55

schemes for a purified automatic colonial civil service.
When he is mustered out from one place he must be
cared for somewhere else.

Let me give an illustration or two from past experi-
ence. Some ten or twelve years ago Congress made an
effort to protect the buffalo herd in the Yellowstone
Park. To this end provision was made for a certain
number of experts to act as keepers of the Park. Pro-
fessor Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution, wished to
have these keepers drawn from the ranks of trained nat-
uralists, that the Park might be investigated while the an-
imals were cared for. He asked me to nominate one of
these and my choice fell on a young man, a person of
eminent fitness, a doctor of philosophy in Zoology and a
man of physical strength and woodcraft. He is now cu-
rator in the Field Columbian Museum at Chicago. When
the Congressman from his district in Indiana learned of
this choice he demanded the right to make it himself.
This the appointing power dared not refuse, and the Con-
gressman proceeded to redeem his outstanding promise.
He first chose a man whom I will call C. He could not
accept as he was serving a sentence in the Monroe
County jail for larceny. His second choice, H., received
the notice of his appointment while under arrest for rid-
ing a mule into a Martinsville saloon on Sunday morning.
The mule was sober and would not go in. H. died
of alcoholism at Mammoth Hot Springs, and the buffaloes
were slaughtered in the Absarokie Hills unprotected
and unavenged.

In 18^0 the Census Bureau asked me to send them
an expert in fishery matters, at a low salary, below that
offered in the classified service. I suggested the name

156 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

of a young man from Kansas. At once the representa-
tive from Topeka claimed the appointment. He had
promised the first plum that fell to his district to Major
Somebody, and the Major must have it. So the Census
Bureau was obliged to find in the Post Office Depart-
ment a position at the same salary for the Major. This
the Major declined in indignant disgust.

Meanwhile the census of the marine industries went
on in the hands of men grotesquely incompetent. They
were set to doing things that could not be done. They
copied their figures from the magnificent census report
of 1880. They made statistics at random, which were
changed in the Bureau itself to tally with the records of
1880. The expert wrote me: "However little confi-
dence the outside public has in our census figures, it is
vastly greater than the confidence of anyone inside the
Bureau." Finally he resigned in disgust. The resigna-
tion was not accepted. Then he brought charges of in-
competence and falsification against the chief of the
division and all his clerks and enumerators save one or
two. On investigation all were dismissed and the expert
was directed to compile the census of the fisheries for
1890 from the report of the Fish Commission for 1888.
The sound and thorough work of W i llcgjc, a nd Alexander
was thus utilized, but the whole manuscript of the Cen-
sus Bureau on the same subject costing several thousands
of dollars went into the waste basket. The courage of
one clerk saved us from trusting for our information to a
lot of " amateur experimenters " in statistics.

The appointment of drunken idlers to positions of
trust was an every-day affair in all departments not
many years ago. The civil service regulations have

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 157

saved the minor positions, but at the same time they
have intensified the pressure on those above the classi-
fied list. It is a maxim of our politics that anybody will
do for positions outside the country or where newspa-
pers do not send their reporters. All of last year
the parlors of the White House were crowded daily with
friends of politicians, and the Senators forced to stand
as their unwilling sponsors. Every one familiar with
the facts knows that the day of appointments for merit
only has not yet come to Washington. I have pur-
posely chosen two cases from another administration.
I can parallel both of these from the present one. I
see in Mexico the President and his advisers using every
effort to select a wise and effective successor to Matias
Romero, their late accomplished and manly ambassador
at Washington. They have found, at last, a man
worthy of their country and ours. When we have chosen
Ministers to Mexico, with one exception, Pacheco (him-
self a Spanish-Californian), not one of them has under-
stood the language of the country to which he was
sent. Fitness does not interest our politicians. The
President at the best is almost helpless in the hands of
the Congressional influence. The administration has
rarely tried to rise above it. In the international com-
missions, belated as most of them have been, we yet see
an effort to secure the best service possible. This fact
we must recognize, and I do so with real satisfaction.

We may counsel together, economists and preachers ;
we may discuss in conventions the wise management of
alien colonies ; we may pass our virtuous resolutions ;
we may analyze the successes of the Dutch and the
failures of the French, but our masters care not for our dis-

158 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

cussions and our resolutions. Even now the rough riders
of our politics do not conceal their contempt of the whole
business of good government. They are not in the
Philippines " for their health," and our mugwump remon-
strances are but as the idle wind which they regard not.

Still the deed is not accomphshed. I have tried
to keep up with the progress of events, but I have never
heard that we have constitutionally annexed any territo-
ries since we absorbed the little nation of Hawaii.

But if annexation is our final decision, the nation must
begin at once its life and death grapple with spoilsmen
in high places as well as in low.

We are told that the Philippine question is bringing
our best men forward, and that it therefore furnishes a
needed " stimulus to higher politics." But the higher
politics has not yet been shown in our official action.
It appears only in the earnest protest of all classes of
men who look forward to the inevitable disaster. Their
warning voices are outside of politics.

Admitting, however, that somewhere or other a reason
exists for taking the Philippines; admitting that we
have conquered Aguinaldo somehow by gold or by sword,
what shall we do with them ?

Shall we hold them as vassal nations, subject to the
sovereign will of Congress? Shall we make them territo-
ries, self-governing so far as may be under republican
forms? Shall we devise tariffs and other statutes in
their interest alone or shall we extend to them unchanged
our protective tariff, our navigation laws, and our Chinese
Exclusion Act, just as they stand, without modification ?
At this point the annexationists fall apart one from an-
other. To hold the Philippines as a vassal nation is

A BLIND MANS HOLIDAY. 159

Imperialism. It is the method of Great Britain and of
Holland. Its justification is its success. It teaches
respect for law, which is the first essential in industrial
development. It holds the open door, which is the first
essential to commerce.

In promoting industrial progress in the tropics we
have two successful methods on record, through enforced
labor and through contract labor. Neither of these is
slavery, as Mr. Ireland has pointed out, but the distinc-
tion is not one worth wrangling over. Java, with law
and order, perfect cultivation, fine roads and great in-
dustrial activity, the fairest garden in all the world,
furnishes the highest type of industrial success. The
island is one vast plantation, owned by the kingdom of
Holland. The natives have lost the title to the land
and cannot buy or sell it. They pay their taxes to the
government in work; the labor is obligatory and the
obligation is enforced by law. In such manner the peo-
ple are rescued from natural indolence. There is pros-
perity everjrwhere. The state derives a large revenue,
the people are relatively contented, though a stranger to
the idea of freedom. With politics the native has noth-
ing to do. Missionaries are excluded from the island
and the people have only to work as they are told, and
enjoy themselves as they can. " This may not be republi-
canism, but it is business."

This is a way to a certain prosperity in the Philippines,
but with us it is not a possible way. Our temper, our
traditions, our machinery of government leave no room
for such despotic paternalism. Even this method has
failed in other Dutch colonies. It fails with the negroes
in the Dutch colony of Surinam. In the midst of the

l6o IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

coffee harvest the people go off to the woods for a month
of devil worship. The spell comes on them, and off they
go. The only recourse of the plantation owners is to
bring contract labor from China or Japan. This method
has failed in Sumatra, where the natives still hold out
against the civilization that would make money out of
their work.

Only through coolie contract labor has industrial suc-
cess in any of the British West Indies been possible.
The natives will not work continuously unless they are
forced to work as slaves. But contract labor from the
outside means the ultimate extermination of the natives
themselves.

In tropical Mexico the industrial situation is not much
better. The great haciendas in the sugar and coffee re-
gion, cheap as labor is (six to ten cents a day), are never
sure of help when needed. Even now Seiior WoUheim,
Mexican Minister to Japan, is arranging for Japanese
contract laborers to work the great coffee plantations of
Chiapas and Tabasco. Enforced labor of the natives,
contract labor from the outside — between these we must
choose, if the tropics are made economically profitable.
Both systems are forms of slavery, but slavery is endemic
in the tropics. Freedom in the warm countries means
freedom from work, but without work there is no wealth
in mines or sugar.

" If the Antilles are ever to thrive," says James An-
thony Froude (as quoted by Mr. Ireland), " each of them
should have some trained and skilful man at its head
unembarrassed by local elected assemblies . . . Let us
persist in the other line, let us use the West Indian govern-
ments as asylums for average worthy persons to be pro-

A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY. l6l

vided for, and force on them black parliamentary institu-
tions as a remedy for such persons ' inefificiency, and
these beautiful countries will become like Hayti, with
Obeah triumphant and children offered to the devil and
salted and eaten, and the conscience of mankind wakes
again and the Americans sweep them all away."

Concerning Dominica, Mr. Froude says : " Find a
Rajah Brooke if you can, or a Mr. Smith of Scilly . . .
Send him out with no more instructions than the Knight
of La Mancha gave Sancho, — to fear God and do his
duty. Put him on his metal. Promise him the praise
of all good men if he does well ; and if he calls to his
help intelligent persons who understand the cultivation
of soils and the management of men, in half a score of
years Dominica will be the brightest gem of the Antilles
. . . The leading of the wise few, the willing obedience
of the many, is tlie beginning and end of all right action.
Secure this and you secure everything. Fail to secure
this and be your liberties as wide as you can make them,
no success is possible."

This ideal of Mr. Froude is not without precedent in
American colonial affairs. The wonderful development
of New Metlakahtla by William Duncan is the perfection
of wise paternalism. Single-handed, by the sheer force
of his religion and his personal character, he has changed
these cannibal Indians into intelligent, sober, self-respect-
ing. God-fearing citizens. But the element of failure '
lies in the almost certain collapse of his work when the i
strong hand of the founder is withdrawn. The rule of
the Pribilof Islands is the same in theory, and under
competent men, as it is to-day, it works well in practice.

But government by rulers not responsible to the people

1 62 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

they rule is Imperialism. It is contrary to our ways
and traditions, and our newspapers and politicians alike
hasten to repudiate it. It is, in fact, industrial success
at the expense of political development. The alterna-
tive is to bring the Filipinos into politics, to endow
them with the rights of our citizens, to give them the
services of our own politicians and let natives and carpet-
baggers work out their own salvation under our forms of
law. I cannot imagine any government much worse
than this might be, but it is safer than Imperialism, if
these lands and these people become a part of our
democratic nation. If we must choose, let us stick to
republican forms. A folly is always better than a crime.
Confusion, bankruptcy and failure probably are better in
the long run than ImperiaUsm. They are more easily
cured. America has ideals in civil government and to
these she must be loyal. The Union can never endure
" half slave, half free," haU democracy, half empire.
We cannot run a republic in the West and a slave plant-
ation in the East. We must set our bondsmen free,
however unready they may be for freedom. There is
no doubt that our forms of law, the evolution of ages,
are ill-fitted for the needs of primitive men. Doubtless
it would be better for them to work out their own
destiny as we have worked out ours. But if they join
us, they must take up with our fashions, because we can-
not adapt ourselves to theirs.

The Anglo-Saxon is, doubtless, the grandest of races,
pushing, effective, successful. But it is not the most
lovable, the most considerate, nor the most just when
it covets what another possesses. Many Anglo-Saxon
achievements are justified only by success. " The efforts

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 1 63

of our Anglo-Saxon nations," says Professor Lewis G.
Janes, " to civilize inferior races by force have always
been tragic failures. Witness New Zealand where about
40,000 Maoris survive out of 700,000 who were there
a century ago ... It is not the testimony of history
that the best survive. The strongest and ablest resist
and are killed off. Those lacking in vitality who supinely
submit to the inevitable are the ones who survive . . .
It is the fate of all people on whom conditions of life are
forced in advance of their functional development. Does
the tragedy of the passing of these peoples bring any
adequate compensation to the world ? The sociologist
and ethical teacher is compelled to say no. It brutalizes
and depraves the conqueror. It perpetuates despotic
methods of government. It prolongs the evil reign of
militancy. It debases labor and gives risf to class dis-
tinctions.

"The Maoris, the Hawaiians, the Filipinos, the
Cubans, are all more competent to rule themselves than
we are to govern them, judged by any test that implies
their permanent betterment and survival as a people.
We have begun at the wrong end in our efforts to civilize
the world . . . The path of conquest is gory with the
blood of victors and victims alike."

Says Goldwin Smith : " If empire is to be regarded
as a field for philanthropic effort and the advancement
of civilization, it may safely be said that nothing in that
way equals, or ever has equalled, the British Empire
in India. For the last three-quarters of a century, at
all events, the empire has steadily administered in the
interest of Hindu. Yet what is the result? Two hun-
dred millions of human sheep, without native leader-

164 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

ship, without patriotism, without aspirations, without
spur to self-improvement of any kind j multiplying, too
many of them, in abject poverty and infantile depend-
ence on a government which their numbers and neces-
sities will too probably in the end overwhelm. Great
Britain has deserved and won the respect of the Hindu ;
but she has never won, and is now perhaps less likely
than- ever to win, his love. Lord Elgin sorrowfully ob-
serves that there is more of a bond between man and
dog than between Englishman and Hindu. The natives
generally having been disarmed cannot rise against the
conqueror, and their disaffection is shown only in occa-
sional and local outbreaks, chiefly of a religious character j
or in the impotent utterances of the native press. But
the part of the population which was armed, that is to
say the Sepoys, did break out into what was rather an
insurrection of caste than a military mutiny, and com-
mitted atrocities which were fearfully avenged by the
panic fears of the dominant race. It is perilous busi-
ness all round, this governing of inferior races. Nor is
it true that the work is done better by the highest race
than by one upon a lower level, on which it is not so im-
possible to sympathize or even fuse with the lowest.
' Some of the tribes of the Philippines are said to be as
fierce as Apaches. If that is all. Uncle Sam will handle
them in his accustomed style.' Is not a warning con-
veyed in such words ? Dire experience has shown that
the character of the master suffers as well as the body
of the slave.

" War, the almost certain concomitant of empire, is
alleged to have a more blessed effect on the internal
harmony of nations. This we are told not only in the

A BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY. 165

press, but even from the pulpit ; some going even so far
as to intimate that the restoration of national harmony
was a sufficient object for this war. The moral world
would be strangely out of joint if a nation could cure
itself of factiousness or of an internal disorder by shed-
ding the blood and seizing the possessions of its neigh-
bors. War has no such virtue. The victories of the
Plantagenets in France were followed by insurrections
and civil wars at home, largely owing to the spirit of
violence which the raids of France had excited. The
victories of Chatham were followed by disgraceful scenes
of cabal and faction as well as of corruption, terminating
in the prostration of patriotism and the domination of
George III. and North. Party animosities in the United
States do not seem to have been banished or even allayed
by the Cuban War. Setting party divisions aside, no
restoration of harmony appeared to be needed, so far as
the white population was concerned. Not only peace,
but good-will, between the North and the South had
been restored in a surprising degree. The Blue and the
Gray had fraternized on the field of Gettysburg. It was
to harmonize white and black that some kindly influence
was manifestly and urgently needed. But all through
the war and since the war, American papers have been
almost daily recording cases of lynching, sometimes of
such a character as to evince the last extremity of hatred
and contempt. The negro is lymphatic, apathetic,
patient of degradation and even of insult. But San
Domingo saw that he had a tiger in him ; and when the
tiger broke loose, hell ensued. There has been at least
one instance of the retaliatory lynching of a white man ;
and now we have a bloody battle of races at Virden.

1 66 IMPERIAL .DEMOCRACY.

Why should the American Commonwealth want more
negroes? "

It is said that we must conquer Aguinaldo because he
in turn is unable to subdue the rest of the fourteen
hundred islands. We tolerate two republics in Hayti
and five in Central America. What matter if two or
three exist in the vast extent of the Philippine archi-
pelago? What business is that of ours? These wide-
scattered islands never constituted one nation and never
will. The most of them were never in the hands of
Spain, except in name. Outside of Luzon there are
thirty-two different tribes, it is said, each a little nation
of itself, each speaking a different tongue. So far from
being " paralyzed by centuries of Spanish oppression "
as the editor of the " Outlook " describes them, most of
these wild folk have never heard of Spain. What harm
if our " new-caught " vassal the Mohammedan Sultan of
Sulu shall continue to rule his Mohammedan tribes in
Mohammedan fashion? We must let him do it anyhow.
We cannot do it any better. Why not a republic of
Visayas as well as a republic of Luzon? If separate
autonomy suits the people concerned why should we
fight for unification? Do we believe that Spanish rule
was better than freedom? These wild tribes must work
out their own destiny or else go into slavery. Perhaps
the latter is their manifest destiny. There is no reason
why we should make it ours.

As I have said many times, the function of democracy

is not to secure good government, but to strengthen the

1 people so that they may be wise enough to make good

, government for themselves. The real white man's burden

is not the control of delinquent and dependent races,

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 1 67

the turning of indolence into gold. It is the develop-
ment of what is sound and sane in human nature, the
elimination of war and corruption by the force of healthy!
manhood. j

It is said that the politics of America is " insufferably
parochial," its problems petty and local, and that to hold
a hand in the affairs of the world is essential to the
development of great men in freedom. But " insuffer-
ably parochial," the affairs of free men must ever be.
The best government is that which best minds its own
business. Our own affairs are always local and devoid
of world-wide interest. Only through usurpation and
tyranny do governmental affairs attract the fickle notice
of the world at large.

Annexationists now admit that the seizure of the
Philippines is a " leap in the dark." But this is not the
truth. Every element in the matter is known, and well
known, to every student of political science. Our ex-
cellent commission can bring us no new facts. What
we do not know is which way Congress may decide to
leap. Between military rule and democratic anarchy
there is all the difference in the world, and the degree
of our final disappointment depends on our policy as to
conciliation, taxation, and the control of the civil service.

Just when shall we begin democratic rule in the Philip-
pines ? How shall we make it work with a people alien
and perverse, who have no Anglo-Saxon instincts and no
relation to our history? It will take some time, some
say 20 years, some 500, of military discipKne to prepare
them to do their part as citizens of the United States,
their part in governing us. Military rule is offensive and
costly. The longer it endures the less fitted are the

l68 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

people for civic independence. Are we ready to meet
the expense? Some say that we must wait till the
Anglo-Saxon is in the numerical majority. That time
will never come. With every rod of Luzon soil marked
by an Anglo-Saxon grave, the living Anglo-Saxons would
be a hopeless minority.

" At Batavia," says Mr. Valentine, the principal city
of Java, which was originally situated in the midst of a
deadly swamp, the mortality was appalling, and the settle-
ment in its early years was known as the graveyard of
Europeans. Dutch records show that at Batavia, 1,119,
375 deaths occurred between the years 1730 and 1752,
or in 22 years; and 87,000 soldiers and sailors died in
the government hospitals between the years 17 14 and
1776.

"To indicate the small percentage of whites to

. Malays, I mention, in passing, that at the present time

the total population of the district known as the Malay

Straits Settlements is probably 550,000 of whom not

4,000 are whites."

If we go further into details of control of the tropics
we shall see that difficulties accumulate. When we con-
sider a tariil policy for the Philippine Islands we find
ourselves at once between the devil and the deep sea.
The " open door " is the price of England's favor, or
rather it is the price of the approval of England's ruling
politicians. It is the price of our own commerce. A
generous policy as to foreign trade is essential to any
kind of prosperity. But the open door to commerce
marks the doom of our protective system. It is left
for Imperialism to give the death-blow to Protectionism.
The open door places the veto on our schemes for

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 169

Asiatic exclusion. To open the doors of the Orient is
to open our doors to Asia as well. To do or not to do
is alike difficult and dangerous. The feeling that unless
we can exploit the islands and ultimately exterminate
their inhabitants, we do not want them at all, is growing,
especially in humanitarian circles. The dead hand of
monasticism already holds a great part of Luzon. This
we cannot tolerate, for it was the head and front of
Spanish oppression ; nor by our Constitution can we
remedy it. We are bound to respect the rights of
property, however acquired. Our sole remedy for any
ill is freedom. For these problems I see no solution,
nor indeed should we hope for any. If the Administra-
tion should formulate any policy whatever, two-thirds of
the expansionists would repudiate it. There is no scheme
on which we can agree which can be made to work.

"Something between an American territory and a
British colony," we are told, is to be their final condition.
A territory is a waiting state; a colony is land held
under martial law or in any other way for the good of
trade. To work for something between these is to fail
on every hand. As matters are, we shall fall short of
Irtiperialism. On the other hand, we shall fail to give
justice. The final result will be a hybrid military
imperialistic-democratic occupation, unworthy the name
of government, the laughing-stock of monarchy, the
shame of democracy. Toward such a condition the
movement of events is swiftly rashing us.

I note in the journals that the Secretary of the Treas-
ury in his estimates takes no account of the revenue to
be derived from Cuba and the Philippines. For this
the papers justly praise his wisdom. There can be no

I70 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

real revenue from these sources. The only income
which any people can receive from colonies is through
increase of trade. This goes into private hands, but
finally swells the wealth of taxables. Since her experi-
ence in 1776, England has never taxed her colonies.
The more worthless islands we undertake to conquer and
rule the further are we from a favorable balance of
accounts.

We now come to the final question : If we take the
Philippines, what will they do to us?

If we fail, they will corrupt and weaken us. If we
succeed and continue our success, they will destroy our
national ideals. To rule them as a vassal nation is to
abandon our democracy, to introduce into our government
machinery which is not in the people's hands. Shall we
handle our vassals through the President, through Con-
gress, or through military occupation? Obviously mili-
tary occupation, under the direction of the Executive, is
the only possible way. Congress is too busy with other
things. Paternalism degenerates into tyranny, and with-
out the artificial stimulus of honor and titles which Eng-
land so lavishly uses, tyranny becomes corruption and
neglect. To admit the Filipinos to equality in govern-
ment is to degrade our own citizenship with only the
slightest prospect of ever raising theirs. It is to estab-
lish rotten boroughs where corruption, shall be the rule
and true democracy impossible. The relation of our
people to the lower races of men of whatever kind has
been one which degrades and exasperates. Every alien
race within our borders to-day, is an element of danger.
When the Anglo-Saxon meets the Negro, the Chinaman,
the Indian, the Mexican as fellow-citizens, equal before

A BLIND MAN S HOLIDAY. 171

the law, we have a raw wound in our poUtical organism.
Democracy demands likeness of aims and purposes
among its units. Each citizen must hold his own free-
dom in a republic. If men cannot hold their rights
through our methods our machinery runs over them.
The Anglo-Saxon will not mix with the lower races.
Neither will he respect their rights if they are not strong
enough to maintain them for themselves. If they can
do this they cease to be lower races.

Between Imperialism on the one hand and assimila-
tion on the other, are all unwholesome possibilities. An
efficient colonial bureau would be, as in England, an
affair of the Crown, its details out of the people's hands.
An inefficient one would be simply spoils in the hands of
future Tammanies. Unless represented in Congress and
potent in party conventions outlying possessions will be
wholly neglected. When the newspaper correspondents
are called home nobody cares what goes on in Cuba or
Manila. We have not yet framed a code of laws for
Hawaii or Alaska.

With the war in Luzon a certain class of obligations
have arisen. These should be met in manly fashion.
But the final result should not be a Philippine State,
which shall rule itself and help rule us. Still less do we
want an oligarchy of sugar syndicates, or a rule by mili-
tary force, or a carpet-bag anarchy like that which once
desolated the South, nor the equal corruption of rule
under agents and pro-consuls sent out from Washington.
These alternatives are all abhorrent, and we see no other
save that of chronic hopeless guerilla warfare, the con-
dition in Luzon to-day, unless we recognize Philippine
independence. This has its embarrassments, too, but

lyz IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

they are honorable ones and can leave no disgrace or
regret.

The establishment of a protectorate over the indepen-
dent Philippines has many difficulties. It is on the one
hand a scheme for finally seizing the islands, on the other
a device to let them go easily. If we assmne unasked re-
sponsibilities for them, they will be reckless in making
trouble. A protected republic is the acme of irresponsi-
bility. Its politicians may declare war against neutral
nations, solely " to see the wheels go round." As mat-
ters now stand, however, we have no other course before
us, and the blunders in dealing with Aguinaldo have
made this course not easy. The protectorate is favored
by the best judgment of the Filipinos themselves. They
ask the help and sympathy of America.

Ramon Reyes Lala, a full-blooded Filipino, born in
Luzon, but educated in England, an American citizen,
of standing in New York, is quoted as saying :

" Although I believe we have a great future, 1 can-
not disguise to myself the fact that we are not yet ready
for independence. More especially because the Fili-
pinos have not had the preparation for self-government
possessed by the founders of the American Republic.
And I apprehend that, intoxicated with their new-found
liberty, the Filipinos might perpetrate excesses that would
prove fatal to the race. I feel this all the more when I
consider that the revolutionary leaders, Aguinaldo and
his companions, though fervent patriots, do not represent
the best classes of my countrymen, who, almost without
exception, are for a protectorate, or for annexation.

" And it is this that I, too, a Filipino, desire most
ardently. Give us an American protectorate; a terri-

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 1 73

torial government ; the judiciary, the customs, and the
executive in the hands of Federal ofScials ; the interior
and domestic administration in the hands of the Filipi-
nos themselves ; and their self-selected officials will rule
understandingly and well without friction, which would
be wholly impossible for alien functionaries begotten of
a Western civilization.

"Of you, Americans, I, a Filipino, therefore, beg to
not leave my countrymen as you found them ! You can-
not, in humanity, give them back into Spanish bondage.
You cannot, in justice, sell them to some European
power to become subject, most likely, to another tyr-
anny. They feel that they have fought for and won
their own freedom, though acknowledging that you have
facilitated it. They would, therefore, oppose such dis-
position to the bitter death. And a Filipino knows how
to die ! Let a thousand martyrs attest !

" You must help them, you who have so nobly assisted
in freeing them ; you must make it possible for them
to attain their destiny — the realization of the national
self."

The following words of Mr. Clay McCauley, are
worthy of careful consideration in this connection :
"As a result of a study of the situation at Manila^,
I think there are only three ways open to the United!
States for the solution of the Philippines problem.
In the first place the islands must be annexed by
force or purchase. The use of force means that the
United States will be plunged into the most disastrous
foreign war in their history, a war that would entail
great loss of life and treasure and the violation of na-
tional honor. Purchase means the recognition of the

174 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

insurgents as allies during the war with Spain, the re-
ward of the leaders with high office and salaries, the
employment of insurgents in military and civil offices,
with back pay as aUies for some months, etc. Such pur-
chase would secure a compromising gain of doubtful
tenure.

"Generally speaking, the Americans in Manila are
opposed to annexation in any form. The second way
open is to make a complete transfer of the sovereignty
in these islands from Spain to the Philippine Republic,
the United States retaining for its own use Manila bay
and ports — like Hong Kong by Great Britain. This
solution means the defenseless exposure of the Philip-
pine Islands to the greed of the world's powers, with a
consequent acute crisis in Europe over its far eastern
question. This way is neither honorable nor wise. The
third is to recognize the autonomy of the Philippines
under an American protectorate. This means inde-
pendence for the Philippine Republic in the administra-
tion of its own internal affairs, the United States taking
charge of the supreme judiciary and the republic's for-
eign relations, such as the power to declare war or to
enter into treaties with foreign powers and the control of
the customs. This solution might bring about tutelage
toward absolute independence in the future or voluntary
annexation to the United States. Only by the third way
can there be peace and prosperity for both the United
States and the Philippines. Immediate action is im-
perative."

As to our true policy of to-day I give the fullest in-
dorsement to the sane words of Professor Janes, in sub-
stance as follows :

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 1 75

1 . Let us carry out the solemn pledge made to the
world with respect to Cuba, and retain military posses-
sion only long enough to enable the Cubans to organize
a government of their own. We have no right to insist
that our own, or any particular form of government,
shall be adopted by the Cubans, or to impose qualifica-
tions of citizenship upon them.

2. The same rule should be adopted in regard to Porto
Rico.

3. This government should acquire no inhabited
country which cannot be made self-governing under
our forms and ultimately received into the family of
States. If, in the future, the people of Cuba and Porto
Rico agree with those of the United States that annexa-
tion is mutually desirable, the matter can be decided,
and in accordance with the provisions of their constitu-
tion and ours.

4. Our policy in the Philippines should be exactly the
same. Let the people fit their government to their own
needs with the guarantee of our protection from outside
interference for a time, at least.

5. Under no circumstances should distant territory in-
habited by an alien population, not self-governing under
republican forms, be retained as a permanent possession
by the United States.

The immediate necessity of the day is set forth in the
petition of the " Anti-Imperialist League : " *

• This petition is signed by the following persons :

George S. Boutwell, of Massachusetts.
George F. Edmunds, of Vermont.
John Sherman, of Ohio.
Donelson CafEery, of Louisiana.

1/6 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

" They urge, therefore, all lovers of freedom, without
regard to party associations, to co-operate with them to
the following ends :

"First. That our government shall take immediate
steps towards a suspension of hostilities in the Philip-
pines and a conference with the Philippine leaders, with
a view of preventing further bloodshed upon the basis
of a recognition of their freedom and independence as
soon as proper guarantees can be had of order and pro-
tection to property.

"Second. That the Congress of the United States

W. Bourke Cockran, of New York.
William H. Fleming, of Georgia.
Henry U. Johnson, of Indiana.
Samuel Gompers, of Washington.
Felix Adler, of New York.
"David Starr Jordan, of California.
Winslow Warren, of Massachusetts.
Herbert Welsh, of Pennsylvania.
Leonard Woolsey Bacon, of Connecticut.
Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts.
Samuel Bowles, of Massachusetts.
• I. J. McGinity, of Cornell University.
Edward Atkinson, of Massachusetts.
Carl Schurz, of New York.
Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland.
Herrmann von Hoist, of Chicago University,
Moorfield Storey, of Massachusetts.
Patrick A. Collins, of Massachusetts.
Theodore L. Cuyler, of New York.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, of Massachusetts.
Andrew Carnegie, of New York.
John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky.
Charles Eliot Norton, of Harvard University.
W. G. Sumner, of Yale University.
C. H. Parkhurst, of New York.

A BLIND MAN S HOLIDAY. 1 77

shall tender an official assurance to the inhabitants of
the Philippine Islands that they will encourage and assist
in the organization of such a government in the islands
as the people thereof shall prefer, and that upon its or-
ganization in stable manner the United States, in accord-
ance with its traditional and prescriptive policy in such
cases, will recognize the independence of the Philip-
pines and its equality among nations, and gradually
withdraw all military and naval forces."

There is nothing before us now save to make peace
with the Filipinos, to get our money back if we can, to
get a coaling station if we must — ^and get out. Tliese
people must first be free before they can enter a nation of
freemen.

As to details, it rests with those who have the power to
act to lay out a plan of action. It is useless for the
plain citizen to urge or suggest anything, for there is no
possible line of conduct not fraught with serious difficul-
ties, and none which does not demand the highest order
of statesmanship. The worst possible line of conduct is
to let matters drift along the current of destiny, in the
hope that some easy solution may develop. To postpone
action on vital questions may be good politics but it
is bad statesmanship. The handling of affairs like this
demands indeed the services of " the best ye breed," not
as soldiers but as doers of deeds.

I may quote in this connection the noble words of
Carl Schurz :

" We are told that, having grown so great and strong, we must
at least cast off our childish reverence for the teachings of Wash-
ington's farewell address — 'nursery rhymes that were sung
around the cradle of the republic' I apprehend that many of

178 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

those who now so flippantly scoff at the heritage the Father of
his Country left us in his last words of admonition, have never
read that venerable document. I challenge those who have to
show me a single sentence of general import in it that would not
as a wise rule of national conduct apply to the circumstances of
to-day. What is it that has given to Washington's farewell ad-
dress an authority that was revered by all until our recent vic-
tories made so many of us drunk with wild ambitions ? Not
alone the prestige of Washington's name, great as that was and
should ever remain. No, it was the fact that under a respect-
ful observance of those teachings this Republic has grown,
from the most modest beginnings into a Union spanning this
vast continent, our people having multiplied from a handful to
75,000,000 ; we have risen from poverty to a wealth the sum of
which the imagination can hardly grasp ; this American nation
has become one of the greatest and most powerful on earth, and,
continuing in the same course, will surely become the greatest
and most powerful of all. Not Washington's name alone gave
his teachings their dignity and weight ; it was the practical re-
sults of his policy that secured to it, until now, the intelligent
approbation of the American people. And unless we have com-
pletely lost our senses, we shall never despise and reject as mere
' nursery rhymes ' the words ot wisdom left us by the greatest
of Americans, following which the American people have achieved
a splendor of development without parallel in the histoiy of man-
kind."

The grave responsibility we have assumed, that of
bringing freedom to the oppressed, calls us to act with
conscience and with caution. We are no longer a child
nation, a band of irresponsible human colts, but mature
men, capable of wielding the strongest influence humanity
has felt. We must shun folly. We must despise greed.
We must turn from glitter and cant and sham. We must
hate injustice as we have hated intolerance and oppres-
sion. We must never forget among the nations we alone
stand for the individual man.

A BLIND man's HOLIDAY. 1 79

The greatness of a nation lies not in its bigness but in
its justice, in the wisdom and virtue of its people, and in
the prosperity of their individual affairs. The nation
exists for its men, never the men for the nation. At the
endof our Civil War, in 1865, it was feared that by the
compromise of reconstruction the principle of inequality
before the law would be again engrafted on our polity.
It was then that Lowell put these memorable words into
the mouth of his Yankee patriot, Hosea Biglow :

I seem to hear a whisperin' in the jur,

A sighin', like, of unconsoled despair,

Thet comes from nowhere an' from everywhere,

An' seems to say, " Why died we ? warn't it, then.

To settle, once for all, thet men wuz men ?

Oh, airth's sweet cup snetched from us barely tasted.

The grave's real chUl is feelin' life wuz wasted I

Oh, you we lef, long-lingerin' et the door,

Lovin' you best, coz we loved Her the more,

Thet Death, not we, had conquered, we should feel

Ef she upon our memory turned her heel.

An' unregretful throwed us all away

To flaunt it in a Bund Man's Holiday I "

IV.
COLONIAL LESSONS OF ALASKA.

IV.
COLONIAL LESSONS OF ALASKA.*

" And there's never a law of God or man runs north of Fifty-
Three."

Kipling.

The United States is about to enter on an experience
which the London Speaker cleverly describes as " com-
pulsory imperialism." Wisely or not, willingly or not,
we have assumed duties toward alien races which can be
honorably discharged only by methods foreign to our
past experience. In the interests of humanity, our
armies have entered the mismanaged territories of Spain.
The interests of humanity demand that our influence
should not be withdrawn and the duties we have hastily
assumed cannot be discharged within a single genera-
tion.

For an object lesson illustrating methods to be avoided
in the rule of future colonies we have not far to seek.
Most forms of governmental pathology are exemplified
in the history of Alaska. From this history it is my pur-
pose to draw certain lessons which may be useful in our
future colonial experience.

Thirty years ago (1867) the United States purchased

• Printed in the Atlantic Monthly, November, 1898.

183

l84 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

from Russia the vast territory of Alaska, rich in native
resources, furs, fish, lumber, and gold, thinly populated
with half-civilized tribes from whose consent no govern-
ment could " derive just powers " nor any other. In the
nature of things, the region as a whole must be incapable
of taking care of itself, in the ordinary sense in which
states, counties, and cities in the United States look after
their own affairs. The town-meeting idea on which
our democracy is organized could have no application in
Alaska, for Alaska is not a region of homes and house-
holders. The widely separated villages and posts have few
interests in common. The settlements are scattered along
a wild coast. Inaccessible one to another ; most of the
natives are subject to an alien priesthood, the white men
knowing " no law of God nor man." With these elements,
a civic feeling akin to the civic life in the United States
can in no way be built up.

It is a common saying among Americans in the north
that " they are not in Alaska for their health." They
are there for the money to be made, and for that only ;
caring no more for the country than a fisherman cares
for a discarded oyster-shell. Of the few thousand who
were employed there before the mining excitement be-
gan, probably more than half returned to San Francisco
in the .winter. Their relation to the territory was and is
commercial only, and not civil.

Alaska has an area nearly one fifth as large as the rest
of the United States, and a coast line as long as all the
rest. Outside the gold fields the permanent white pop-
ulation is practically confined to the coast, and only in
two villages, Juneau and Sitka, can homes in the Ameri-
can sense be said to exist. Even these towns, rela-

COLONIAL LESSONS OF ALASKA. 1 8$

tively large and near together, are two days' journey
apart, with communication, as a rule, once a week.

When Alaska came into our hands, we found there a
native population of about 32,000. Of these, about
12,000 — Thlinkits, Tinnehs, Hydas, etc. — are more or
less properly called Indians. Of the rest, about 18,000
— Innuits, or Eskimos, and some 2500 Aleuts — are allied
rather to the Mongolian races of Asia. There were
about 2000 Russian Creoles and half-breeds living with
the Aleuts and Innuits, and in general constituting a rul-
ing class among them, besides a few Americans, mostly
traders and miners.

Then, as now, the natives in Alaska were gentle and
childlike ; some of them with a surface civilization, others
living in squalid fashion in filthy sod houses. They all
supported themselves mainly by hunting and fishing.
Dried salt salmon, or uk/was the chief article of diet,
and the luxuries, which as time went on became neces-
sities of civilization, — flour, tea, sugar, and tobacco, — were
purchased by the sale of valuable furs, especially those
of the sea otter and the blue fox. The Greek Church,
in return for its ministrations, received, as a rule, one
skin in every nine taken by the hunters. The boats of
the natives outside the timbered region of southeastern
Alaska were made of the skin of the gray sea lion, which
had its rookeries at intervals along the coast. With the
advent of Americans the sea lion became rare in southern
Alaska, great numbers being wantonly shot because
they were " big game ; " and the natives in the Aleutian
region were forced to secure sea lion skins by barter
with the tribes living farther to the north. This process
was facilitated by the Alaska Commercial Company,

1 86 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

which maintained its trading-posts along the coast, ex-
changing for furs, walrus tusks, and native baskets the
articles needed or craved by the natives.

Of all articles held by the latter for exchange, the fur
of the sea otter was by far the most important. Since
these animals were abundant throughout the Aleutian
region thirty years ago, and the furs were valued at
from ;?300 to ?i,ooo each, their hunters became rela-
tively wealthy, and the little Aleut villages became
abodes of comparative comfort. In the settlement of
Belkofski, on the peninsula of Alaska, numbering 165
persons all told, I found in the Greek Church a com-
munion service of solid gold, and over the altar was a
beautiful painting, — small in size but exquisitely finished,
— which had been bought in St. Petersburg for ^^250.
When these articles were purchased, Belkofski was a
center for the sea otter chase. With wise government,
this condition of prosperity might have continued in-
definitely. But we have allowed the sea otter herd to be
wasted. The people of Belkofski can now secure noth-
ing which the world cares to buy. As they have no
means of buying, the company has closed its trading
post, after a year or two of losses and charity. The
people have become dependent on the dress and food
of civilization. Suilering for want of sugar, flour, to-
bacco, and tea, which are now necessities, and having
no way of securing material for boats, they are abjectly
helpless. I was told in 1897 that the people of Wosnes-
senski Island were starving to death, and that Belkofski,
the next to starve, had sent them a relief expedition.
I have no information as to conditions in 1898, but cer-
tainly starvation is imminent in all the various settle-

COLONIAL LESSONS OF ALASKA. 1 8/

merits dependent on the company's store and on the sea
otter.* Some time ago it was reported that at Port
Etches the native population was already huddled to-
gether in the single cellar of an abandoned warehouse,
and that other villages to the eastward were scarcely
better housed. However this may be, starvation is in-
evitable along the whole line of the southwestern coast.
From Prince William's Sound to Attu, a distance of
nearly i,8oo miles, there is not a village (except Un-
alaska and Unga f) where the people have any sure
means of support. These people, 1,165 ^^ number,
have no present outlook save extermination. For permit-
ting them to face such a doom we have not even the
excuse we have had for destroying the Indians. We want
neither the land nor the property of the Aleuts. When
their tribes shall have disappeared, their islands are
likely to remain desolate forever.

The case of the sea otter merits further examination.
The animal itself is of the size of a large dog, with long
full gray fur, highly valued especially in Russia, where it

* In 1897, the trading posts of Akutan, Sannak, Morjovi,
Wosnessenski, Belkofski, Chernofski, Kashega, Makushin, and
Bjorka were abandoned by the Alaska Commercial Company,
while the stores at Atka and Attu were turned over to a former
agent.

t In Unga the Aleuts find work in the gold mines, at Unalaska
in the lading of vessels. Very lately extensive shipyards have
been established at Unalaska, and natives from the various settle-
ments in the Aleutian Islands, from Akutan to Attu, are tempo-
rarily employed there. It has been found necessary to build
vessels destined for the Yukon river at some port in Bering Sea,
as none of those constructed to the southward have survived the
rough seas of the North Pacific. But this shipbuilding industry
must be of very short duration,

1 88 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

was once an indispensable part of the uniform of the
army officer. The sea otters wander in pairs, or some-
times in herds of from twenty to thirty, spending most of
their time in the sea. They are shy and swift, and
when their haunts on land are once disturbed they rarely
return to them. Any foreign odor — as the smell of man,
or of fire, or of smoke — is very distasteful to them. Of
late years the sea otters have seldom come on shore
anywhere, as the whole coast of Alaska has been made
offensive to them. The single young is born in the kelp,
and the mother carries it aroimd in her arms like a
babe.

In tlie old days the Indians killed the otters with
spears. When one was discovered in the open sea, the
canoes closed upon it, and the hunters made wild noises
and incantations. To the Indian who actually killed it
the prize was awarded; the others who assisted in
" rounding up " the animal, getting nothing. In case of
several wounds, the hunter whose spear was nearest the
snout was regarded as the killer. This was a device of
the priests to lead the Indians to strike for the head, so
as not to tear the skin of the body.

Originally, the sea otter hunt was permitted to natives
only. By their methods there were never enough taken
seriously to check the increase of the species. The Aleut
who had obtained one skin was generally satisfied for the
year. If he found none after a short hunt, the " sick
tum-tum " or " squaw-heart " would lead him to give up
the chase.

Next appeared the " squaw-man " as a factor in the
otter chase. The squaw-man is a white man who marries
into a tribe to secure the native's privileges. These

COLONIAL LESSONS OF ALASKA. 189

squaw-men wete more persistent hunters than the natives,
and they brought about the general use of rifles instead
of spears. A larger quantity of skins was taken under
these conditions, but the numbers of sea otters were not
appreciably reduced.

The success of squaw-men in this and other enter-
prises aroused the envy of white men less favorably
placed. A law was passed by Congress depriving native
tribes of all privileges not shared by white men. This
opened the sea otter hunt to all men, and thus forced
the commercial companies, against their will, to enter
on a general campaign of destruction.

Schooners were now equipped for the sea otter hunt,
each one carrying about twenty Indian canoes, either
skin canoes or wooden dugouts, with the proper crew.
Arrived at the Aleutian sea otter grounds, a schooner
would scatter the canoes so as to cover about sixty square
miles of sea. It would then come to anchor, and its
canoes would patrol the water, thus securing every sea
otter within the distance covered. Then a station fur-
ther on would be taken and the work continued. In
this way, in 1895, 1^96, and 1897, every foot of probable
^^ otter ground was examined. At the end of the season
of 1897 only a few hundred sea otters were left, most of
them about the Sannak Islands, while a small number of
wanderers were scattered along remote coasts. Of these,
two were taken off Ano Nuevo Island, California, and
two were seen at Point Sur. One, caught alive on land,
was allowed to escape, its captor not knowing its value.
One was taken in 1896 on St. Paul, one of the Pribilof
islands, and one in 1897 on St. George, another of the
same group.

190 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

The Statistics of the sea otter catch have been care-
fully compiled by Captain Calvin L. Hooper, comman-
der of the Bering Sea patrol fleet, a man to whom
the people of Alaska owe a lasting debt of gratitude.
These show that in the earliest years of American occupa-
tion upwards of 2,500 skins were taken annually by ca-
noes going out from the shore, and this without apparent
diminution of the herd. Later, with the use of schooners,
this number was increased, reaching a maximum of 4,152
in 1885. Although the number of schooners continued
to increase, the total catch fell off in 1896 to 724, these
being divided among more than 40 schooners, with nearly
800 canoes. Very many of the hunters thus obtained no
skins at all.

At the earnest solicitation of Captain Hooper, this
wanton waste was finally checked in 1898. By an order
of the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Gage, all sea otter
hunting, whether by white men or by natives, was limited
to the original Indian methods. In this chase, no one
is now allowed " the use of any boat or vessel other than
the ordinary two-hatch skin-covered bidarka or the open
Yakutat canoe."

This simple regulation will prevent any further waste.
Had it been adopted two years ago, it would have saved
;?5 00,000 a year to the resources of Alaska, besides per-
haps the lives of a thousand people, who must now starve
unless fed by the government, — a tardy paternalism
which is the first step toward extermination. The loss
of self-dependence and of self-respect which government
support entails is as surely destructive to the race as
starvation itself.

Our courts have decided that the Aleuts are American

COLONIAL LESSONS OF ALASKA. I9I

citizens, their former nominal status under Russian law
being retained after annexation by the United States.
But citizenship can avail nothing unless their means of
support is guarded by the government. They have no
power to protect themselves. They can have no repre-
sentatives in Congress. A delegate from Alaska, even if
such an official existed, would represent interests wholly
different from theirs. They cannot repel encroachments
by force of arms, nor indeed have they any clear idea of
the causes of their misery, for they have cheerfully taken
part in their own undoing. In such case, the only good
government possible is an enlightened paternalism. This
will be expensive, for otherwise it will be merely farcical.
If we are not prepared to give such government to our
dependencies, we should cede them to some power that
is ready to meet the demands. Nothing can be more
demoralizing than the forms of democracy, when actual
self-government is impossible.

In general, the waste and confusion in Alaska arise
from four sources, — ^lack of centralization of power and
authority, lack of scientific knowledge, lack of personal
and pubUc interest, and the use of offices as political
patronage.

In the first place, no single person or bureau is re-
sponsible for Alaska. The Treasury Department looks
after the charting and the patrol of its coasts, the care
of its animal life, the prohibition of intoxicating liquors,
and the control of the fishing industries. The investi-
gation of its fisheries and marine animals is the duty of
the United States Fish Commission. The army has
certain ill-defined duties, which have been worked out
mainly in a futile and needless relief expedition, with an

192 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY,

opera bouffe accompaniment of dehorned reindeer.
The legal proceedings, within the territory are governed
by the statutes of Oregon, unless otherwise ordered.
The Department of Justice has a few representatives
scattered over the vast territory, whose duty it is to en-
force these statutes, chiefly through the farce of jur)'
trials. The land in general is under control of the De-
partment of the Interior. The Bureau of Education has
an agent in charge of certain schools, while the President
of the United States finds his representative in his ap-
pointee, the governor of the territory. The office of
governor carries large duties and small powers. There
are many interests under the governor's supervision, but
he can do little more than to serve as a means of com-
munication between some of them and Washington. It
is to be remembered that Alaska is a great domain in
itself, and, considering means of transportation, Sitka,
the capital, is much further from Attu or Point Barrow
than it is from Washington.

The virtual ruler of Alaska is the Secretary of the
Treasury. But in his hands, however excellent his in-
tentions, good government is in large degree unattain-
able for lack of power. Important matters must await
the decision of Congress. The wisest plans fail for want
of force to carry them out. The right man to go on
difficult errands is not at hand, or, if he is, there is no
means to send him. In the division of labor which is
necessary in great departments of government, the affairs
of Alaska, with those of the customs service elsewhere,
are assigned to one of the assistant secretaries. Of his
duties Alaskan affairs form but a very small part, and this
part is often assigned to one of the subordinate clerks.

COLONIAL LESSONS OF ALASKA. 1 93

One of the assistant secretaries, Mr. Charles Sumner
Hamlin, visited Alaska in 1894, in order to secure a
clear idea of his duties. This visit was a matter of great
moment to the territory, for the knowledge thus obtained
brought wisdom out of confusion, and gave promise of
better management in the future.

To this division of responsibility and confusion of
authority, with the consequent paralysis of efifort, must
be added the lack of trustworthy information at Wash-
ington. Some most admirable scientific work has been
done in Alaska under the auspices of the national gov-
ernment, notably by the United States Coast Survey, the
United States Fish Commission, and the United States
Revenue Service. But professional lobbyists often
have posed as authorities in Alaskan affairs. Other
witnesses have been intent on personal or corporation
interests, while still another class has drawn the long-bow
on general principles. Such testimony has tended to
confuse the minds of officials, who have come to regard
Alaska chiefly as a departmental bugbear.

Important as the fur seal question has become, its
subject matter received no adequate scientific investiga-
tion until 1896 and 1897. Vast as are the salmon in-
terests, such investigation on lines broad enough to yield
useful results is yet to be made. The sole good work on
the sea otter is that of a revenue officer whose time was
fully occupied by affairs of a very different kind.

Thus it has come to pass that Alaskan interests have
suffered alike from official credulity and official skep-
ticism. Matters of real importance have been shelved,
in the fear that in some way or other the great commer-
cial companies would profit by them. At other times

194 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

the word of these same corporations has been law, when
the department might well have asserted its independ-
ence. The interest of these corporations is in general
that of the government, because they cannot wish to
destroy the basis of their own prosperity. To protect
them in their rights is to prevent their encroachments.
These facts have been often obscured by the attacks of
lobbyists and blackmailers. On the other hand, in minor
matters the interests of the government and the com-
panies may be in opposition, and this fact has been often
obscured by prejudiced testimony..

Another source of difficulty is the lack of interest in
distant affairs which have no relation to personal or
partisan politics. The most vital legislation in regard
to Alaska may fail of passage, because no Congressman
concerns himself in it. Alaska has no vote in any con-
vention or election, no delegate to be placated, and can
give no assistance in legislative log-rolling. In a large
degree, our legislation at Washington is a scramble for the
division of public funds among the different congressional
districts. In this Alaska has no part. She is not a
district filled with eager constituent? who clamor for new
postoffices, custom-offices, or improved channels and
harbors. She is only a colony, or rather a chain of little
colonies ; and a colony, to Americans as to Spaniards,
has been in this case merely a means of revenue, a region
to be exploited.

Finally, the demands of the spoils system have often
sent unfit men to Alaska. The duties of these officials
are delicate and difficult, requiring special knowledge as
well as physical endurance. Considerable experience in
the north, also, is necessary for success. When positions

COLONIAL LESSONS OF ALASKA. I95

of this kind are given as rewards for partisan service, the
men receiving them feel themselves underpaid. The
political " war-horse," who has borne the brunt of the
fray in some great convention, feels himself " shelved "
if sent to the north to hunt for salmon-traps, or to look
after the interests of haU-civilized people, most of whom
cannot speak a word of English. A few * of these men
have been utterly unworthy, intemperate and immoral ,
and occasionally one, in his stay in Alaska, earns that
" perfect right to be hung " which John Brown assigned
to the " border ruffian." On the other hand, a goodly
number of these political appointees, in American fashion,
have made the best of circumstances, and by dint of
native sense and energy have made good their lack of
special training. The extension of the classified civil
service has raised the grade of these as of other govern-
mental appointments. The principles of civil service
reform are in the highest degree vital in the management
of colonies.

As an illustration of official ineffectiveness in Alaska, I
may take the control of the salmon rivers by means of
a body of "inspectors," In a joint letter to the Assist-
ant Secretary of the Treasury, in 1897, Captain Hooper
and I used the following language : —

" At present this work is virtually ineffective for the
following reasons : The appointees in general have been
men who know little or nothing of the problems involved,
which demand expert knowledge of salmon, their kinds
and habits, the methods of fishing, and the conditions

* According to Governor Brady, himself a competent and honest
man, eleven per cent, of the government officers in Alaska are
now under indictment for official malfeasance.

196 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

and peculiarities of Alaska. For effective work, special
knowledge is requisite, as well as general intelligence
and integrity. These men are largely dependent upon
the courtesy of the packing companies for their knowledge
of the salmon, for their knowledge of fishing methods, for
all transportation and sustenance (except in southeastern
Alaska), and for all assistance in enforcing the law. The
inspectors cannot go from place to place at need, and so
spend much of their time in enforced inaction. They
have no authority to remove obstructions or to enforce
the law in case of its violation. For this reason, their
recommendations largely pass unheeded.

"To remedy these conditions, provision should be
made for the appointment only of men of scientific or
practical training, thoroughly familiar with fishes or
fishery methods, or both, and capable of finding out the
truth in any matter requiring investigation. For such
purposes, expert service is as necessary as it would be in
bank inspection or in any similar specialized work.
The department should provide suitable transportation
facilities for its inspectors. It should be possible for
them to visit at will any of the canneries or salmon
rivers under their charge. They should be provided
with means to pay for expenses of travel and sustenance,
and should receive no financial courtesies from the pack-
ing companies, or be dependent upon them for assist-
ance in carr)ring on their work. The inspectors should
be instructed to remove and destroy all obstructions
found in the rivers in violation of law. They should
have large powers of action and discretion, and they
should have at hand such means as is necessary to carry
out their purposes."

COLONIAL LESSONS OF ALASKA. I97

Under present conditions, the newly appointed inspec-
tor, knowing nothing of Alaska, and still less of the sal-
mon industry, js landed at some cannery by a revenue
cutter. He becomes the guest of the superintendent of
the cannery, who treats him with politeness, and meets
his ignorance with ready information. All his move-
ments are dependent upon the courtesy of the canners.
He has no boat of his own, no force of assistants, no
power to do anything. He cannot walk from place to
place in the tall, wet rye-grass, and he cannot even cross
the river without a borrowed boat. All his knowledge
of the business comes from the superintendent. If he
discovers infraction of law, it is because he is allowed to
do so, and he receives a valid excuse for it. It is only
by the consent of the law-breaker that the infraction can
be punished. The law-breaker is usually courteous
enough in this regard ; for his own interests would be
subserved by the general enforcement of reasonable laws.
The most frequent violation of law is the building of a
dam across the salmon river just above the neutral tide
water where the fish gather as if to play, before ascend-
ing the stream to spawn. Such a dam, if permanent,
prevents any fish from running, and thus shuts off all
future increase. Meanwhile, by means of nets, all the
waiting fish can be captured. This is forbidden by law,
which restricts the use of nets to the sea beaches. Yet
dams exist to-day in almost every salmon river in Alaska ;
even in those of that most rigidly law-abiding of com-
munities. New Metlakahtla, on Annette Island. The
lawlessness of the few forces lawlessness on all.

All that the inspector can do in the name of the gov-
ernment is to order the destruction of an unlawful dam.

IgS IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

He has no power to destroy it ; and if he had, he must
borrow a boat from the company and do it himself.
Then, in the evening, as he sits at the dinner table, the
guest of the offending superintendent, he can tell the
tale of his exploits.

The general relation of the salmon interests to law
deserves a moment's notice. Most of the streams of
southern and southwestern Alaska are short and broad,
coming down from mountain lakes, swollen in summer
by melting snows. The common red salmon, which is
the most abundant of the five species of Alaska, runs up
the streams in thousands to spawn in the lakes in July
and August. One of these rivers, the Karluk, on the
island of Kadiak, is perhaps the finest salmon stream in the
world, having been formerly almost solidly full of salmon
in the breeding season. The conditions on Karluk River
may serve as fairly typical. A few salmon are smoked or
salted, but most of them are put up in one-pound tins or
cans, as usually seen in commerce. This work of pres-
ervation is carried on in large establishments called can-
neries. One of these factories was early built at Karluk,
on a sand-spit at the mouth of the river. All Alaska is gov-
ernment land. The cannery companies are therefore
squatters, practically without claim, without rights and
without responsibilities. The seining-ground on this
sand-spit of Karluk is doubtless the best fishing-ground in
Alaska. The law provided that no fish should be taken on
Saturday, that no dams or traps should be used, that no
nets should be placed in the river, and no net set within
one hundred feet of a net already placed. This last
clause is the sole hold that any cannery has on the fish-
ing-ground where it is situated. Soon other factories

COLONIAL LESSONS OF ALASKA. I99

were opened on the beach at Karluk by other persons,
and each newcomer claimed the right to use the seine
along the spit. This made it necessary for the first com-
pany to run seines day and night, in order to hold the
ground, keeping up the work constantly, whether the fish
could be used or not. At times many fish so taken have
been wasted ; at other times the surplus has been shipped
across to the cannery of Chignik, on the mainland.
Should the nets be withdrawn for an hour, some rival
would secure the fishing-ground, and the first company
would be driven off, because they must not approach
within a hundred feet of the outermost net. With over-
fishing of this sort the product of Karluk River fell away
rapidly. Some understanding was necessary. The
stronger companies formed a trust, and bought out or
" froze out " the lesser ones and the canneries at Karluk
fell into the hands of a single association. All but two of
them were closed, that the others might have full work.
Under present conditions, Alaska has more than twice as
many canneries as can be operated. Some of these were
perhaps built only to be sold to competitors, but others
have entailed losses both on their owners and on their
rivals.

Meanwhile, salmon became scarce in other rivers, and
canners at a distance began to cast greedy eyes on Karluk.
In 1897 a steamer belonging to another great " trust "
invaded Karluk, claiming equal legal right in its fisheries.
This claim was resisted by the people in possession, —
legally by covering the beach with nets, illegally by
threats and interference. More than once the heights
above Karluk have been fortified ; for to the " north of
Fifty-three " injunctions are laid with the rifle. On the
14

200 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

Other hand, " Scar-Faced Charley " of Prince William's
Sound and his reckless associates stood ready to do
battle for their company. In one of the disputes a
small steamer sailed over a net, cast anchor within it,
then steamed ahead, dragged the anchor, and tore the
net to pieces. In another case, a large steamer an-
chored within the fishing-grounds. The rival company
cast a net around her, and would have wrecked her on
the beach. The claim for damages to the propeller from
the'nets, with the more important claim that the fisher-
men of the company were prevented by armed force
from casting their nets, brought this case into the United
States courts. Fear of scandal, and consequent injury
to the company's interests in the east, is doubtless the
chief reason why these collisions do not lead to open
warfare. The difficulty in general is not due to the
lawlessness of the companies, nor to any desire to de-
stroy the industry by which they live. Our government
makes it impossible for them to be law-abiding. It
grants them no rights and no protection, and exacts of
them no duties. In short, it exercises toward them in
adequate degree none of the normal functions of gov-
ernment. What should be done is plain enough. The
rivers are government property, and should be leased on
equitable terms to the canning companies, who should
be held to these terms and at the same time protected
in their rights. But Congress, which cannot attend to
two things at once, is too busy with other affairs to pay
attention to this. The utter ruin of the salmon industry
in Alaska is therefore a matter of a short time. Fortu-
nately, however, unlike the sea otter, the salmon cannot
be exterminated, and a few years of salmon-hatching,

COLONIAL LESSONS OF ALASKA. 201

or even of mere neglect, will bring the industry up
again.

It may be urged that much the same condition of law-
lessness exists in Oregon at the mouth of Rogue River.
But the real condition is very different. On Kadiak the
sole remedy rests with Congress. The people interested
are helpless. But in Oregon, the remedy rests with the
people and with them alone. If the people of Curry
County or of the State of Oregon as a whole prefer law
and order, the machinery adequate to bring it is in their
own hands.

Of the marine interests of Alaska, the catch of the
fur seal is by far the most important, and its details are
best known to the public* Whenever the fur seal ques-
tion promises to lead to international dispute, the public
pricks up its ears ; but this interest dies away when the
blood ceases to " boil " against England. The history
of this industry is more creditable to the United States
than that of the sea otter and the salmon, but it is not
one to be proud of. When the Pribilof Islands came
into our possession, in 1867, we found the fur seal in-
dustry already admirably managed. A company had
leased the right to kill a certain number of superfluous
males every year, under conditions which thoroughly
protected the herd. This arrangement was continued by
us, and is still in operation. If not the best conceivable
disposition of the herd, it was the best possible at the
time ; and to do the best possible is all that good gov-
ernment demands.

We were, however, criminally slow in taking posses-
sion of the islands after their purchase from Russia. In
1868, about 250,000 skins of young males (worth per-

202 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

haps |l2,ooo,ooo), the property of the government, were
openly stolen by enterprising poachers from San Fran-
cisco. As only superfluous males were taken, this on-
slaught caused no injury to the herd. It was simply the
conversion to private uses of so much public property, or
just plain stealing. After 1868 the Pribilof Islands
yielded a regular annual quota of 100,000 skins for
twenty years, when " pelagic sealing," or the killing of
females at sea, rapidly cut down the breeding herd.
This suicidal " industry " originated in the United States ;
but adverse public opinion and adverse statutes finally
drove it from our ports, and it was centered at Victoria,
where, as this is written, it awaits its coup de grace from
_the Quebec commission of 1898.

During the continuance of this monstrous business,*
the breeding herd of the Pribilof Islands was reduced
from about 650,000, females (in 1868-84) to 130,000
(ini897). It is not fair to charge the partial extinction
of this most important of fur-bearing animals to our bad
government of Alaska, inasmuch as it was accomplished
by foreign hands against our constant protest. Yet in a
large sense this was our own fault, for the lack of exact
and unquestioned knowledge has been our most notable
weakness in dealing with Great Britain in this matter.
The failure to establish as facts the ordinary details of
the life of the fur seal caused the loss of our case before
the Paris Tribimal of Arbitration. Guesswork, however

* Monstrous in an economic sense, because grossly and need-
lessly wasteful ; monstrous in a moral sense because grossly and
heedlessly cruel ; withal perfectly legal, because not yet con-
demned by any international agreement in which Great Britain
has taken part.

COLONIAL LESSONS IN ALASKA. 203

well intended, was met by the British with impudent
assertion. British diplomacy is disdainful of mere opin-
ion, though it has a certain respect for proved fact.
Moreover, it was only after a long struggle that our own
people were prevented (in 1898) from doing the very
thing which was the basis of our just complaint against
Great Britain.

The other interests of Alaska I need not discuss here
in detail. The recent discovery of vast gold fields in
this region has brought new problems. Which Congress
has made little effort to meet. If we may trust the news-
papers, our colonial postal system is absurdly inade-
quate, and the administration of Justice remains local or
casual. The Klondike adventurers make their own laws
as they go along, with little responsibility to the central
government. Lynch law may be fairly good law in a
region whence criminals can escape only to starve
or to freeze ; but martial law is better, and the best
available when the method^ of the common-law are out
of the question.

The real criminals of Alaska have been the "wild-
cat " transportation companies which sprang up like
mushrooms with the rush for the Klondike. There are
three or four well-established companies running steamers
to Alaska, well-built, well-manned, and destined to ports
which really exist. But besides the legitimate business
there has been a great amount of wicked fraud. A very
large percentage of the Klondike adventurers know
nothing of mining, nothing of Alaska, little of the sea,
and little of hardship. These people have been gathered
from all parts of the country, and sent through foggy,
rock-bound channels and ferocious seas, in vessels unsea-

204 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

worthy and with incompetent pilots, their destination
often the foot of some impossible trail leading only to
death. I notice in one circular that a graded railroad
bed is shown on the map, through the tremendous ice-
filled gorges of Copper River, a wild stream of the
mountains, in which few have found gold and from
whose awful glaciers few have returned alive. In the
height of the Klondike season of 1898, scarcely a day
passed without a shipwreck somewhere along the coast,
— some vessel foundering on a rock of the Alaskan archi-
pelago or swamped in the open sea. Doubtless most of
the sufferers in these calamities had no business in Alaska.
Doubtless they should have known better than to risk
life and equipment in ships and with men so grossly un-
fit. But the public in civilized lands is accustomed to
trust something to government inspection. The com-
mon man has not learned how ships may be sent out to
be wrecked for the insurance. In established com-
munities good government would have checked this
whole experience of fraud; but in this case no one
seemed to have power or responsibility, and the affair
was allowed to run its own course. The " wild-cat "
lines have now mostly failed, for the extent of the Klon-
dike traffic is far less than was expected, and the Alaska
promoter plies his trade of obtaining money under false
pretenses in some other quarter.

The control of the childlike native tribes of Alaska
offers many anomalies. As citizens of the United States,
living in American territory, they are entitled to the pro-
tection of its laws; yet in most parts of Alaska the
natives rarely see an officer of the United States, and
know nothing of our courts or procedures. In most

COLONIAL LESSONS IN ALASKA. 20$

villages the people choose their own chief, who has
vaguely defined but not extensive authority. A Greek
priest is furnished to them by the established church
of Russia. He is possessed of power in spiritual matters,
and such temporal authority as his own character and
the turn of events may give him. The post trader, rep-
resenting the Alaska Commercial Company, often a
squaw-man of some superior intelligence, has also large
powers of personal influence, which are in general wisely
used. The fact that the natives are nearly always in
debt to the company * tends to accentuate the company's
authority. The control of the Greek priest varies with
the character of the man. Some of the priests are
devoted Christians, whose sole purpose is the good of the
flock. To others, the flock exists merely to be shorn for the
benefit of the church or the priest. But there are a few
whom to call brutes, if we may believe common report,
would be a needless slur on the bear and the sea lion.

On the Pribilof Islands, an anomalous joint paternalism
under the direction of the United States government and
the lessee companies has existed since 1868. The
lessees furnish houses, coal, physician, and teacher, be-
sides caring for the widows and orphans. The govern-
ment agent has oversight and control of all operations
on the islands, and is the official superior of the natives,
having full power in all matters of government. This
arrangement is not ideal, apd is in part a result of early
accident. It has worked fairly in practice, however,
and the natives of these islands are relatively prosperous
and intelligent. The chief danger has been in the

* The credit system has been almost wholly abandoned recently,
as the future of the sea otter leaves no hope of payment of debts.

206 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

direction of pampering. With insurance against all ac^
cidents of life, there is little incentive to thrift. Out-
side of the seal-killing season (June and July) the people
become insufferably lazy. There are records of occa-
sional abuses of power in the past,* — abuses of a kind to
be prevented only by the sending of men of honor as
agents. In general, self-interest leads the commercial
companies to send only sober and decent men to look
after their affairs ; and the government cannot afford to
do less, even for Alaska. Of this the appointing power
at Washington seems to have a growing appreciation.

Among the irregular methods of government in Alaska
we must mention one of the most remarkable experi-
ments in the civilization of wild tribes yet attempted
anywhere in the world.f I refer to the work of William

• For example, some ten or twelve years ago N. K. was fined
fifty dollars by the government agent in charge of the Pribilof
Islands, for " disturbance of the peace." His fault was a too
vehement remonstrance against the violation of his young wife by
American scoundrels temporarily employed on the island. The
case was a. most flagrant one, but the weak-minded agent felt
unable to cope with it. With the plea that " boy will be boys "
he excused the culprits, visiting the punishment on the injured
husband. The ill feeling resulting from this action is still a.
source of embarrassment on St. Paul Island.

t Rev. William Duncan, a Scottish clergyman of the Anglican
communion, some thirty or forty years ago, entered the lands of
the Simsian Indians, a fierce tribe of cannibals living on the
west coast of British Columbia, south of the Alaskan line. By
sheer force of personal courage and with many hairbreadth
escapes, he won the confidence of this people, and proceeded in
his way to civilize and Christianize them. After a time, under his
direction, they built the pretty village of Metlakahtla and became
comfortably self-supporting.

The Church took notice of his work and sent out a bishop to

COLONIAL LESSONS IN ALASKA. 207

Duncan, the pastor and director of a colony of Sinisiaa
Indians at New Metlakahtla. I can only mention Dun-
can's work in passing, but his methods and results
deserve careful study, — ^far more than they have yet re-
ceived. The single will of this strong man has, in thirty
years, converted a band of cannibals into a sober,
law-abiding, industrious community, living in good
houses, conducting a large salmon cannery, navigating a
steamer built by their own hands, and in general prov-
ing competent to take care of themselves in civilized
life.

direct it. The bishop insisted on the use of wine at communion.
To this Mr. Duncan strenuously objected, as even the taste of
intoxicants had a maddening effect on his people, who were kept
in temperance by the most rigid prohibition of alcoholic drinks.
Moreover the belated presence of the bishop as a director of work
already accomplished and beyond his power to aid, was resented
by the followers of Mr. Duncan.

At last, they arranged with the United States Government for
the occupancy of Annette Island, in Alaska, some fifty miles ^
more or less from their former homes. Hither nearly all the
people migrated, under Mr. Duncan's leadership, leaving the'
bishop with the abandoned town.

On Annette Island, a new village, New Metlakahtla, was built,
together with a small steamer and a salmon-cannery, besides their
own church and school-house. It is a village of the most perfect
order, with its own brass-band, church-choir, Sunday-school and
societies for culture. For a long time after their steamer was
built they were not allowed to use it, because not being citizens,
they could not be licensed as pilots, or engineers, and the duly
licensed pilots would not work for Indians. This absurd embargo
was raised by the order of Assistant Secretary Hamlin.

I am indebted to Mr. Hamlin for a copy of the following in-
scription which is placed over the town house of New Metla-
kahtla ;

" We leave the King of the Seasts for he is a deceiver ; he

208 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

One of the least fortunate acts of the United States
Congress in regard to Alaska has been the enactment of
a most rigid prohibitory law as to alcoholic liquors.
This is an iron-clad statute forbidding the importation,
sale, or manufacture of intoxicants of any sort in Alaska.
The primary reason for this act is the desire to protect
the Indians, Aleuts, and Eskimos from a vice to which
they are excessively prone, and which soon ruins them.
But a virtuous statute may be the worst kind of law, as
was noted long ago by Confucius. This statute has not
checked the flow of liquor in Alaska, while it has done
more than any other influence to subvert the respect for
law. Usually, men who " are not in Alaska for their
health " are hard drinkers, and liquor they will have. It
is shipped to Alaska as " Florida water," " Jamaica gin-
ger," " bay rum." Demijohns are placed in flour barrels,
in sugar barrels, in any package which will contain
them.* With all this there is a vast amount of outright
smuggling, which the Treasury Department tries in vain
to check. All southeasterii Alaska is one vast harbor,
with thousands of densely wooded islands, mostly unin-
habited. Cargoes of liquors can be safely hidden almost

says no one is slave under his flag. So every year he punishes
us without cause ; he held up his naughty gun to crush our vil-
lage. Now I find my good friend, he is King of Birds ; he has
sharp eyes to watch over our village if the enemy surround it. I
bid the Lion farewell."

Independence Day, August 7, 1887.

Over the inscription there is a carved picture of a Lion and an
Eagle.

• It is said that when the Umatilla foundered off Port Town-
send, August, 1896, those who took away her cargo found in each
of the sugar barrels consigned to Alaska only a demijohn of whis-
key, the sea having dissolved the sugar.

COLONIAL LESSONS IN ALASKA. 209

anywhere, to be removed piece by piece in small boats.
Many such cargoes have been seized and destioyed;
but the risk of capture merely serves to raise the price
of liquor. Once on shore the liquor is safe enough.
Upwards of seventy saloons are running openly in Juneau,
and perhaps forty in Sitka. There are dives and grog-
geries wherever a demand exists. Most of the tippling-
houses are the lowest of their kind, because as they are
outlaws to begin with, the ordinary restraints of law and
order have no effect on them.

In rSyS, it is said, a schooner loaded with "Florida
water " came to the island of St. Lawrence, in Bering
Sea, and the people exchanged all their valuables for
drink. The result was that in the winter following the
great majority died of drunkenness and starvation, and
in certain villages not a person was left. Sometimes
the stock in trade of whisky smugglers is seized by the
Treasury officials. But high prices serve as a sort of
insurance against capture, and there are ways of secur-
ing a tip in advance when raids are likely to occur. This
traffic demorahzes all in any way connected with it.
But one conviction for illegal sale of liquors has ever
been obtained in Alaska, so far as I know ; and, I be-
lieve, that this was a test case for the purpose of deter-
mining the constitutionality of the law.* A jury trial in

* The appeal of this case (Endleman et al. vs. the United States)
has proved a matter of the greatest importance in relation to the
government of American colonies. It was contended (according
to the New York Evening Post) " that" the law on which the pros-
ecution was based was unconstitutional, because the government
of the United States can exercise only those specific powers con-
ferred upon it by the Constitution ; that the Constitution guaran-
tees to the citizens the right to own, hold, and acquire property,

2IO IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

any case means an acquittal, for every jury is made np
of law-breakers, or of men in sympathy with the law-
breaking. This fact vitiates all other criminal procedure
in Alaska. It should secure the entire abolition of jury
trials and other forms of procedure adapted only to a
compact civilization.*

Whatever laws are made for the control of the liquor
traffic in Alaska should be capable of enforcement.
They should be supported, if need be, with the full force
of the United States. To impose upon a colony laws
with which the people have no sympathy, and then to
leave these people to punish infraction for themselves, is
to invite anarchy and to turn all law into a farce.

Whisky is the greatest curse of the people of Alaska,
— ^American, Russian, and native. I have not a word to
say in favor of its Use, yet I am convinced that unre-
stricted traffic, that any condition of things, would be
better than the present law, with its failure in enforce-
ment. The total absence of any law would not make

and makes no distinction as to the character of the property ; that
intoxicating liquors are property, and are subject to exchange,
barter, and traffic, like any other commodity in which a light of
property exists ; that inasmuch as the power to regulate com-
merce was committed to Congress to relieve it from all restric-
tions. Congress cannot itself impose restriction upon commerce
by prohibiting the sale of a particular commodity ; and that if
Congress has the power to regulate the sale of intoxicating liquors
within the territories as a police regulation, it can only enact laws
applicable to all the territories alike."

* These facts were stated in detail a few years ago by a special
agent of the United States Treasury. As a result, this truthful
witness was indicted by the grand jury at Sitka for slander, — a
futile act, but one which was the source of much annoyance.

Judge W. W. Morrow, of the United States Circuit Court of

COLONIAL LESSONS IN ALASKA. 211

matters much worse than they are. In fact, the law
would hardly be missed. In any case, Alaska gets
along fairly well, — much better than any tropical
region would under like conditions. Cold disinfects
in more ways than one, and Alaska gets the benefit
of it.

We cannot throw blame on the officials at Washington.

Appeals for California, declaring the decision of the court upon
these claims, said : —

" The answer to these and [other like objections urged in the
brief of counsel for the defendant is found in the now well-
established doctrine that the territories of the United States are
entirely subject to the legislative authority of Congress. They
are not organized under the Constitution, nor subject to its com-
plex distribution of the powers of government as the organic law,
but are the creation exclusively of the legislative department, and
subject to its supervision and control. The United States,
having rightfully acquired the territories, and being the only gov-
ernment which can impose laws upon them, have the entire do-
main and sovereignty, national and municipal, federal and state.
Under this full and comprehensive authority. Congress has un-
questionably the power to exclude intoxicating liquors from any
or all of its territories, or limit their sale under such regulations
as it may prescribe. It may legislate in accordance with the
special needs of each locality, and vary its regulations to meet the
circumstances of the people. Whether the subject elsewhere
would be a matter of local police regulations or within the state
control under some other power, it is immaterial to consider ; in
a territory, all the functions of government are within the legisla-
tive jurisdiction of Congress, and may be exercised through a
local government or directly by such legislation as we have now
under consideration."

In other words, the colonies are under the absolute -control o
Congress, subject to no restrictions of any sort, and free from the
operation of any form of constitutional checks and balances.
Only through such freedom is colonial government under the
United States possible.

212 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

They do the best they can under the circumstances.
The dishonest men at the capital are not many, and most
of them the people elect to send there. The minor
officials in general are conscientious and painstaking,
making the best possible of conditions not of their choos-
ing. The primary difficulty is neglect. We try to throw
the burden of self-government on people so situated that
self-government is impossible. We impose on them
statutes unfitted to their conditions, and then leave to
them the enforcement. Above all, what is everybody's
business is nobody's, and what happens in Alaska is
generally nobody's business. No concentration of
power, no adequate legislation, no sufficient appro-
priation, — on these forms of neglect our failure chiefly
rests.

If we have colonies, even one colony, there must be
some sort of a colonial bureau, some concentrated
power which shall have exact knowledge of its people,
its needs, and its resources. The people must be pro-
tected, their needs met, and their resources husbanded.
This fact is well understood by the authorities of Canada.
While practically no government exists in the gold fields
of Alaska, Canada has chosen for the Klondike within
her borders a competent man, thoroughly familiar with
the region and its needs, and has granted him full power
of action. The dispatches say that Governor Ogilvie has
entire charge through his appointees of the departments
of timber, land, justice, royalties, and finances. "The
federal government believes that one thoroughly reliable,
tried, and trusted representative of British laws and jus-
tice, and of Dominion federal power, can better guide
the destinies of this new country than a number of petty

COLONIAL LESSONS IN ALASKA. 213

untried officials with limited powers, and Ogilvie thinks
so himself." *

Under the present conditions, when the sea otters are
destroyed, the fur seal herd exterminated, the native
tribes starved to death, the salmon rivers depopulated,
the timber cut, and the placer gold fields worked out,
Alaska is to be thrown away like a sucked orange.
There is no other possible end, if we continue as we
have begun. We are " not in Alaska for our health,"
and when we can no longer exploit it we may as well
abandon it.

But it may be argued that it will be a very costly
thing to foster all Alaska's widely separated resources,
and to give good government to every one of her scat-
tered villages and posts. Furthermore, all this outlay
is repaid only by the enrichment of private corporations,t
which, with the exception of the fur seal lessees, pay no
tribute to the government.

Doubtless this is true. Government is a costly thing,
and its benefits are unequally distributed. But the
cost would be less if we should treat other resources as
we have treated the fur seal. To lease the salmon
rivers and to protect the lessees in their rights would
be to insure a steady and large income to the govern-
ment, with greater profit to the salmon canneries than
comes with the present confusion and industrial war.

But admitting all this, we should count the cost before

* San Francisco Chronicle, August 15, 1898.

t The interests of Alaska, outside of mining, are now largely in
the hands of four great companies, — the Alaska Commercial
Company, the North American Commercial Company, the Alaska
Packers' Association, and the Pacific Steamer Whaling Company.

214 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

accepting " colonies." It is too late to do so when they
once have been annexed. If we cannot afford to watch
them, to care for them, to give them paternal rule when
no other is possible, we do wrong to hoist our flag over
them. Government by the people is the ideal to be
reached in all our possessions, but there are races of
men now living under our flag as yet incapable of re-
ceiving the town meeting idea. A race of children
must be treated as children, a race of brigands as brig-
ands, and whatever authority controls either must have
behind it the force of arms.

Alaska has made individuals rich, though the govern-
ment has yet to get its money back. But whether colo-
nies pay or not, it is essential to the integrity of the
United States itself that our control over them should
not be a source of corruption and waste. It may be
that the final loss of her colonies, mismanaged for two
centuries, will mark the civil and moral awakening of
Spain. Let us hope that the same event will not mark a
civil and moral lapse in the nation which receives
Spain's bankrupt assets.

V.

THE LESSONS OF THE
PARIS TRIBUNAL OF ARBITRATION.

IS

V.

THE LESSONS OF THE PARIS
TRIBUNAL OF ARBITRATION.*

The second administration of President Cleveland was
especially characterized by the effort to promote certain
governmental reforms regarded by the President and his
advisers as vitally important to the welfare of the United
States.

Most notable among these was the proposed treaty of
arbitration with Great Britain. It was hoped that by
its peaceful operation all bitterness of feeling between
the two great Anglo-Saxon nations was to be avoided in
the future. All disputed questions were to be removed
from the category of war and diplomacy, from the arbit-
rament of force and intrigue to be settled on a basis of
simple justice and international law.

In spite of the most strenuous efforts of the President
and the earnest advocacy of the able Secretary of State
the proposed treaty of arbitration failed to receive the
approval of the Senate of the United States. That arbi-
tration should rightfully supersede war is doubtless the
almost universal opinion of intelligent citizens of both
nations, but that the treaty in question would have this

* Published in the Forum, May, 1899.

217

21.8 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

result many of them were led to doubt. Among the
arguments urged against the proposed treaty of 1896
was the fact of the failure of the Paris Tribunal of Arbi-
tration of 1893, to secure justice or equity. Its decision,
inconsistent with itself, not only failed to settle the fur
seal dispute, but brought it to an acute phase, for which
no remedy was furnished. This condition of things has
passed by without serious friction solely because more
striking matters have cast it into the shade. The inter-
national good feeling which now exists has no relation
to the principle of arbitration, and the question at issue
in 1893 is still unsettled.

Setting aside minor claims and side issues, the Paris
Tribunal rendered its decision in favor of the " protec-
tion and preservation " of the fur seal in the waters of
the North Pacific and Bering Sea. To insure this " pro-
tection and preservation "' the same tribunal prescribed
regulations, having, by the consent of the nations con-
cerned, the validity of international law. These regula-
tions have in three years achieved the commercial de-
struction of the valuable animal they were intended to
protect and preserve. In a few years more, unless re-
scinded by international agreement, they must accom-
plish its actual biological extinction. If these regula-
tions had been designed to promote destruction and
extermination instead of " protection and preservation,"
they could hardly have been more effective to that end.
It is not to be supposed that the high Tribunal of inter-
national arbitration so stultified itself as to do this on
purpose. The plain intention of the Tribunal was act-
ually to protect and preserve, and it failed in this intent
simply through its neglect or inability to master the

THE PARIS TRIBUNAL OF ARBITRATION. 219

facts in the natural history of the animal with which it
had to deal.

The acceptance of the principle of arbitration may
be taken for granted. The practical details of its appli-
cation are more important than the principle itself.
This fact has been commonly overlooked by the advo-
cates of arbitration. It has been virtually assumed
that the principle would work itself. But it is evident
that if such a tribunal of arbitration can be deceived or
confused as to plain vital facts, its decision does not
settle the question in dispute. If the question is not
settled some higher tribunal is necessary. This can only
be the force of arms or the force of public opinion, and
neither of these has been found infallible in the establish-
ment of justice. If one nation or the other is wronged
or betrayed in arbitration the danger of war is not avoided
by its operation.

The Paris Tribunal of Arbitration -is, to be sure, only
one of many in which England and the United States
have been concerned. But it was more important than
most of the others, because it had to consider not
merely conflicting claims for money-damages, but facts
and laws of science and their bearing on new principles
of international law. Its business was to ascertain facts
and to make these the basis of new precedents in action.
The question of damages was merely incidental to the
main problem.

In this relation compulsory compromise, the mere abate-
ment of extreme claims on both sides, is inadequate and
ineffective. If arbitration is to take the place of war, it
must be operative even in cases where one nation is
wholly in the right or wholly in the wrong in some or all

220 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

of its contentions. If its final verdict is to be sound, it
must be based on accuracy of fact, not on a rough
average of contending claims.

It may happen that with conflicting equities and con-
fusing testimony the tribunal will be tempted to cut the
knot by arbitrary compromise. If the sole question is
one of damages more or less, this solution is easy, for
obvious reasons. But no tribunal can change a law of
nature nor alter a matter of fact.

In the interest of arbitration in the future we may
examine in some detail the operations of the Paris Tri-
bunal, that we may discover the reasons of its failure,
and perchance make use of the lessons it should
teach.

The case at issue was at bottom a very simple one.
The fur seal herds of the North Pacific breed on islands
situated in Bering Sea belonging to the United States
and Russia. On these islands (Pribilof and Komandor-
ski) they receive all necessary protection. The existence
of the herds demand such protection, as well as further
protection, when they are feeding or migrating in the open
sea beyond the usual three-mile limit of territorial juris-
diction. The animals visit certain islands in the summer.
They breed on them, and make them their home. The
young remain there until driven away by the storms of
winter. The adults leave the islands in summer only to
feed, going to a distance of from lOO to 200 miles for that
purpose. The winter is spent by the entire herd in the
open sea, their migrations extending from 1,000 to 2,500
miles to the southward of their breeding resorts. For
many years, both under Russian and American control,
the females have received absolute protection on land, the

THE PARIS TRIBUNAL OF ARBITRATION. 221

killing for skins being restricted to the herds of superfluous
males. As only about one male in thirty is able to main-
tain himself on a rookery or to rear a family, about
twenty-nine out of every thirty are necessarily super-
fluous. The survival of one male in a hundred is suffi-
cient for the actual needs of propagation. The young
males on land are as easily handled and selected as
sheep, and no diminution whatever to the increase of
the herd has arisen from selective land-killing. The
number of females in the herd bearing young each year
was in the earlier days about 650,000 on the American
islands and perhaps half as many on the Russian. The
number of males and of young was in each case about
twice as many more. This gave a total on the American
or Fribilof Islands each year of about 2,000,000 animals
of all classes, while on the Russian islands or Komandor-
ski, there were about 1,000,000. About 1884, differ-
ent persons known as pelagic sealers, chiefly citizens of
Canada, but some of them from the United States, began
to attack the herd in Bering Sea. Here no selective
killing was possible. The females were always in the
numerical majority, as the males had become les3
numerous on account of the land killing and as they left
the islands less frequently in the summer. Each female
above two yekrs of age, when taken in the sea died with
her unborn young. Most of the adult females taken in
the sea after July ist, had left young seals or pups on the
islands, and these orphan pups invariably starved to
death.

Through the agency of pelagic sealing and for no other
cause, the herd rapidly declined in numbers. In 1897,
there were about 130,000 breeding seals on theAmeri-

222 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

ian islands, or about 400,000 of all classes. On the Rus-
sian islands the number of breeders was less than 65,000.

For this great reduction in numbers there was but one
cause, a cause plain, self-evident and undeniable, — the
slaughter of breeding females at a rate largely in excess
of the rate of increase. While other causes have been
assigned for diplomatic purposes none of these alleged
explanations are worthy of the slightest consideration in
explaining the decline.

It was evident even in 1893 to all capable of forming
an opinion that pelagic sealing was the sole known
cause of the decline of the fur seal herds. It was also
evident that as an industry it must be self-destructive,
since if permitted to exist on any scale, which would
make it profitable, it must destroy the herd on which it
operates.

It was equally evident, on the other side, that there
was no existing canon of international law by which it
could be prohibited. International law is simply the
sum of the tacit consents and formal agreements of na-
tions one with another. There was no other valuable
animal having habits similar to those of the fur seal.
There could thus be no adequate precedent for its pro-
tection. To slaughter animals fern naiuree anywhere
in the open sea is assumed as a right of any citizen
of any nation, unless prevented by the statutes of that
nation. A " right " in this sense has no sort of sacred-
ness. It is simply a case in which the affair is nobody's
business and therefore not forbidden. The progress of
civilization and the growth of international law have been
marked by the steady elimination of " rights " of this
kind, that is of rights which are inimical to life or

THE PARIS TRIBUNAL OF ARBITRATION. 223

property of others. Salus populi, suprema lex, the needs
of the people override all statutes, and it is affirmed that
the needs of the civilized world demand the preservation
of the world's most valuable beast of the sea.

In the unquestionable absence of international law
on the subject it lay within the province of the Paris
Tribunal to make new international law, if the in-
terests of civilization would be aided thereby. This
in fact, they did, through their regulation of pelagic
sealing, though in such an ineffective way that their
action was without value unless as a legal precedent.

The case was complicated in the beginning by ad-
ditional claims of the American government; namely,
(a) the right to exercise exclusive jurisdiction over the
herd wherever found, and (b') over the sea in which it
roamed and fed, together with {c) the right to use force
in support of such jurisdiction. This right to use force
it had actually put into effect, by the seizure of numerous
vessels, under the British flag, found killing seals in Ber-
ing Sea. The vital claim of the United States, stripped
of verbiage was that the fur seal was of value to civiUzation,
that from the nature and the habits of the animal selec-
tive killing of males on land only could be safely allowed,
that such condition had long existed forming an estab-
lished and valuable industry, that pelagic killing was sure
to bring the extinction of the herd, and that such ex-
tinction was already far advanced. Hence the interests
of civilization demanded the abolition of pelagic killing
and the recognition that the ownership and the pro-
tection of the breeding homes must carry with it the
ownership and the protection of the animals themselves.
I assume that the right to protect the fur seal is the

224 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

essential portion of the American contention, because all
other parts of the contention would be useless without
it. They were valuable chiefly for the purpose of
strengthening the main case. They were of little im-
portance in themselves, but were pretentious in form and
of such a character as to awaken popular interest which
the real matter at issue might fail to excite. These
further contentions were in brief :

1. That Bering Sea was mare clausum, a closed
sea, being entirely surrounded by the territory of Russia
and the United States, and therefore its waters were
under the control of these governments as the waters of
a harbor are.

2. That in view of such control, the government of the
United States was justified in forbidding pelagic sealing
in these waters, in warning vessels not to engage in it,
and in seizing those which disregarded such prohibition
and such warning.

3. That inasmuch as the American fur seal herd made
its home on the Pribilof Islands, returning there each
season to breed, and landing nowhere else, the herd,
wherever found, belonged to the owners of these islands.
The animal has then the animus reveriendi, or pur-
pose to return on leaving the islands, and this purpose
being based on the instinct of reproduction is the
strongest impulse known in nature, either to man or beast.

The British authorities practically denied all these
contentions and in general all the alleged facts on
which they seemed to rest. After much diplomatic
correspondence, lasting through nearly two years, it
was finally agreed to submit all of these claims, and the
counter-claims for damages through the forcible interrup-

THE PARIS TRIBUNAL OF ARBITRATION. 225

tion cf pelagic sealing, to a high tribunal of arbitration,
to meet in Paris in 1893. The Tribunal was composed
of seven judges, two from Great Britain, two from the
United States and one each from France, Italy and
Norway.
As to these contentions it may be said, —

1. The vital claim to which the others were all subor-
dinated seems to be true and just beyond dispute. The
protection and preservation of the fur seal appeals to the
interest of civilization.

2. The claim to control and ownership of Bering Sea
rests partly on historical evidence, partly on legal pre-
cedent. It was put forth as above stated primarily as a
device to justify interference with pelagic sealing. It
was set aside by the Tribunal, apparently with justice.

3. The seizure of the British ships could be justified
only as an act of war. If we were willing to fight in
defense of our action, the act might be justified by the
results of war. To submit it to arbitration was to confess
judgment at the start, leaving us no alternative but to
pay the bill.

4. The claim of the actual ownership of the herd is
one of natural justice, not of prescribed law. It could
become an enforceable claim only through international
agreement, or through the action of a tribunal of arbitra-
tion. Neither could be made retroactive, hence we
could have no legal claim against Great Britain for dam-
ages through the wanton destruction of the fur seal
herds.

It is evident that in a case of arbitration the final
verdict must vindicate itself, otherwise the sole value of
this method of settling disputes is lost. It is therefore

226 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

vitally important that the arbitration tribunal should
correctly understand the facts at issue. Without a clear
comprehension of all the relevant facts, a just decision is
impossible. In proportion as error exists in the funda-
mental propositions, so must the final result be vitiated.
In international affairs, the judges should be men of
exceptional integrity and of exceptional intelligence,
capable of weighing and valuing the most varied forms
of evidence. Perjury, pettifogging and concealment
would be alike an insult to such a court, and every
device which experience has shown necessary in the
extraction of truth from testimony should be in the hands
of the tribunal.

All this would seem self-evident, but in the organiza-
tion of the Paris Tribunal it seems not to have received
due thought. In considering the proceedings of this
court, the following facts are apparent :

It was arranged that all testimony should be presented
in printed form. It was arranged that all testimony as
to matter of fact should be given in ex parte afifidavits.
It was arranged that no witness should be present in
person. It was therefore impossible to cross-question
any one of the hundreds of deponents, to ascertain
the range of his experience or his mental or moral fitness
to give testimony. Neither the members of the
American nor those of the British commission of inves-
tigation, who had visited the fur seal islands in person,
and who were supposed to have full knowledge of the
vital facts of seal life, were brought before the Tribunal.
The American commissioners, who should have been the
very center of the American case, were not even called
to Paris.

THE PARIS TRIBUNAL OF ARBITRATION. 22/

The omission of all safeguards against perjury seems to
indicate :

1. That one party or both had perfect confidence in
the self-evident justice of its case ; or

2. That one party or both had perfect confidence
that the other would not try to manufacture evidence,
or suborn perjury ; or

3. That one party or both intended to take advantage
of the other to confuse the court by the submission of
evidence that would not bear cross-questioning ; or

4. That one party or both, from ignorance of natural
history, failed to recognize the vital importance
of exact knowledge of the habits of the animal in ques-
tion.

It may be observed in passing that diplomacy may be
as effective in the organization of a tribunal of arbitra-
tion as in any other sphere of action, and as successful
in defeating justice.

The choice of two representatives from each of the
contending nations implied that each was to have two
advocates on the bench. The unquestioned eminence
of the four thus balanced against one another would have
no real weight in determining the final results. This
left the remaining three as the real arbiters and de-
stroyed from the first the character of the court as an
impartial tribunal by dividing it against itself. As to
the other judges it may be said, that their choice from
nations not in sympathy with the supposed imperialistic
tendencies of the United States, shown by its claim of
exclusive jurisdiction over a vast sea, may have left the
burden of prejudice against the American case. This
is merely an inference resting on no knowledge of the

228 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

fact. A more serious difficulty arose from the fact that
the knowledge of the English language by two of the three
judges, or the majority of the sole final arbiters, was none
too perfect. None of the seven judges had any knowl-
edge whatever of natural history, and hence the volume
of testimony tended to confuse rather than enlighten
them. Probably neither they nor many others since
have ever read through, with a view to seriously weigh-
ing its value, the vast mass of guesswork and casual
opinion offered as testimony. That this is true appears
in the fact that during the sessions of the Tribunal
various unofficial brief summaries of evidence were
printed for the use of the court. These were element-
ary statements of the claims of one side or the other,
almost puerile in their simplicity, and the need for them
shows clearly that the more elaborate testimony was not
understood. Furthermore, there is every reason to
believe that the work of the Tribunal was done in undue
haste. After the first novelty of the situation was over
each person concerned was anxious to make an early
escape from the August heat of Paris, to some cooler
retreat, or more congenial duties.

The testimony offered before the Tribunal we may
here briefly analyze.

On the side of the United States there was :
I. The report of the American Commissioners.
One of these gentlemen is a noted physicist, the other a
naturalist of high distinction. The two visited the
Pribilof Islands in person, spending some ten days in ex-
amining the breeding rookeries. They consulted fully
with different persons who had enjoyed large opportuni-
ties for observing the herd year by year, and the work of

THE PARIS TRIBUNAL. OF ARBITRATION. 229

compilation of the final report was prosecuted with the
exact methods of a trained naturalist.

The work of the commission can hardly be called
a scientific investigation, inasmuch as its stay on the
islands was too short for the critical examination of any
phase of fur seal life. On the other hand the report was
emphatically a work of science. In its preparation the
commissioners showed a masterly knowledge of the value
of evidence. All accessible sources of information were
examined. Not a fact vital to the real question at issue
was overlooked, concealed or misstated. The elaborate
later investigations of 1896, and 1897, under direction
of the present writer have only confirmed the conclusions
of the earlier commission. Additional facts of many
kinds have since come to light and more exact statistics
as to numbers have been attained, but none of these af-
fect the main contention of the American commission
of 1 89 1, that pelagic sealing, and that alone, was destroy-
ing the fur seal herd.

2. In addition to this the case of the United States
was supported by a long array of affidavits. These may
be divided into three classes :

(a) The statements of trained observers who had vis-
ited the islands for one reason or another and made
scientific observations of the animals.

(b) The statements of government officials in Alaska,
especially those of agents in charge of the Pribilof
Islands. Some of the testimony was of high value ; most
of it consisted of the conjectures and impressions of
careless minds, more or less biased by the desire to help
on the American contention.

(c) The affidavits of the seal hunters of San Francisco

230 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

and elsewhere. Most of these statements were in the
form of responses to a set of prepared questions made
by men ignorant of all matters outside of their trade of
shooting and skinning seals. Of the appearance of
the animal marked for slaughter, they were able to speak
with some precision, but on the larger questions of its
habits and condition, their opinions, however honestly
given, and however favorable to the American contention,
were of little value. To this there were naturally occa-
sional exceptions. One of the whaling captains for ex-
ample was a naturalist of exceptional ability, the author
of a valuable work on the mammals of the sea.

(rf) Testimony of London furriers, experts in ques-
tions of furs and skins, but only remotely acquainted
with the animals from which they are taken.

3. Besides these sources of evidence on the main
question of the decline of the herd, and its cause, a
large amount of evidence for the subsidiary contentions
was put forward.

This consisted of documents, maps, etc. :

(a) Historical testimony concerning Russian claims
to ownership of Bering Sea, and

(^) Historical precedents as to claims of jurisdiction
tlvei marine animals beyond the three-mile limit.

In favor of the British contention appears :

I. The report of the British commissioners, the one a
geologist of repute, the other known as a politician and
member of Parliament. These gentlemen had spent a
summer in Bering Sea, about two weeks of it on the
Pribilof Islands. Neither of them were naturalists and
neither made any pretense of scientific investigation.
Their report was of the nature of a lawyer's brief, in

THE PARIS TRIBUNAL OF ARBITRATION. 23 1

favor of pelagic sealing. It had no scientific value or
validity whatever, and its effectiveness lay chiefly in its
bold denial of many of the well established facts in the
natural history of the fur seal.

2. The testimony of the pelagic sealers in Victoria.
Analysis of the many published affidavits show them to
be virtually the work of one person. Series of leading
questions are asked. These are answered by the sealers,
doubtless honestly enough, but all in such a way as to
favor the British contention. These men had never vis-
ited the Pribilof Islands nor seen the animal in question
in its haunts. Most of them could no more testify as to
the nature and habits of the fur seal than could so many
butchers' apprentices could bear witness as to the origin
of breeds of cattle. Of matters within their own obser-
vation they were more competent to speak, but here it
is evident that their opinions were clouded by their sup-
posed interests. This relation of opinion to interest is
well understood by lawyers, and is the basis of Lord
Bowen's epigram, " Truth will out, even in an affidavit."

By these affidavits it was sought to prove :

(a) That the number of seals shot at sea and not
recovered was about 3 per cent, (i to 12 per cent.)

(3) That the number of females in the pelagic catch
did not usually exceed that of the males.

(ir) That a large percentage of these were barren.

{d) That the Russian and American herds freely in-
termingled and were indistinguishable.

(^e) That not all fur seals visited the islands in summer,

{/) That the fur seals were steadily increasing in num-
bers under pelagic sealing.

(f) That they mated in the sea as well as on land.
r6

232 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

{h) That they were not confined to the known breed-
ing islands but have rookeries on islands as yet unknown.

(i) That they resorted from time to time to new breed-
ing places.

(/■) That the sexes could not be distinguished by the
appearance of the skin.

{k) That the sexes traveled together at sea.

(/) That it was an easy thing to raid the Pribilof
Islands.

To these statements all of them partly false, and most
of them wholly so, all of them moreover partly matters
of opinion to the deponents, we may add three other
fictions useful to forward the British contention. One
of these is the assertion that orphaned seal pups
feed on sea-weeds, and are nourished by the milk of
other mothers than their own. This was a pure invention,
without a fact or an analogy to back it.

More important than this and more damaging to the
American cause, because originally of American origin,
were two other falsehoods, unsupported by any facts
whatever, but none the less effective in producing con-
fusion in the minds of the judges. These were (a) the
statement that the driving of the males on land destroys
the virility of those* turned back from the killing,
and {b) the assertion that the number of males had
been unduly reduced by land killing, leaving a supposed
class of "barren females," that had failed of impreg-
nation.

A final and perhaps decisive element of importance in

* The seals above or below the " killable " age of three yeais
are mostly released. At three years the skin is at its best for
the uses of the furrier.

THE PARIS TRIBUNAL OF ARBITRATION. 233

the British contention was a piece of testimony secured
from Russia by some kind of diplomatic deal. While
the Americans were contending for the exclusion
of pelagic sealing for a radius of 200 miles from the
islands, or throughout Bering Sea, Russia was induced to
accept a closed zone of thirty miles radius around her fur
seal islands. This agreement was of course, not in the
interest of the Russian fur seal herds, and it had no
value as indicating the size of the closed zone necessary
to give the animals protection about the American islands.
But it had value as influencing a court already bewil-
dered as to the facts. Its dramatic introduction in the
midst of a closing speech after the counsel of both sides
had rested their case, and when no opportunity of show-
ing its worthlessness was left, was a piece of sharp
practise which the dignity of the high tribunal of inter-
national arbitration might have resented. The testi-
mony was, to be sure, withdrawn, on the protest of the
opposing counsel, but whether retained or withdrawn, it
served the same purpose.

The sole purpose of the British authorities in the whole
matter was to win the case for the Canadian sealers, not
to protect the herd, nor to secure justice, nor to estab-
lish high precedents in international law.

3. On the British side was also produced a collection of
historical documents bearing on Bering Sea, with counter-
evidences that the precedents claimed by the Americans
are not full precedents at all. The pertinence of all of
this we may freely admit, as the decision of the Paris
Tribunal settled once for all the questions of interna-
tional law, though it could not change the laws of nat-
ural history.

234 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

The purpose of the present paper is not to reargue
the question, still less to award blame or praise. I
wish solely to call attention to the defective organization
of the court as regards preparation for ascertaining the
truth about disputed questions of fact. As one of the
American cpmmissioners has cleverly said, the verdict of
the Paris Tribunal would have been different had
there been some one present " who knew how to laugh at
the right place." If some one who knew the real facts
of the case, had had the authority " to laugh at the right
place," the eloquent pathos by which the British counsel
told of the horrors of the seal-drive would have been
laughed out of court. As no one on either side
knew the facts at first hand, its absurdity was not ap-
parent. Naturally, the eminent counsel on both sides
devoted most of their attention to questions of law. But
the fundamental question was one of fact. Under what
conditions of protection can these animals live and prop-
agate their kind ? That the facts of fur seal life were
not understood by the Tribunal accounts for the self-
contradictory regulations laid down in their final verdict.

The final decision of the Tribunal was, in brief, —

1 . Denial that the Bering Sea is mare clausum.

2. Denial that the fur seal herds are the property of
the United States when in the open sea.

3. Denial of the right of seizure of sealing vessels on
the open sea, this decision requiring that vessels already
seized should be paid for.

4. Provision for the protection and preservation of the
fur seal in the interests of humanity.

This last object it was sought to accomplish through
a series of regulations, by which pelagic sealing was

THE PARIS TRIBUNAL OF ARBITRATION. 235

recognized as legal, but subjected to the following re-
strictions, in brief :

1. No fur seals are to be taken within, a closed zone
of 60 miles distance from the Pribilof Islands.

2. No fur seals are to be taken at sea from May i to
July 31, inclusive.

3. Only sailing vessels with undecked boats or canoes
can be used in sealing.

4. Each sealing vessel shall take out a special license
and shall fly a distinguishing flag.

5. Each master of vessel engaged in fur-seal fishing
shall record in his official log-book the place, number, and
sex of fur seals captured each day.

6. The use of nets, firearms, and explosives in Bering
Sea is forbidden.

7. The two Governments must see that men engaged
in fur-seal fishing shall be fit to handle the weapons used.

8. These regulations shall not apply to Indians of
either country using undecked boats of the usual sort,
outside of Bering Sea, and not under contract for delivery
of skins to any particular person.

9. These regulations for " the protection and preser-
vation of the fur seals " shall remain in force until they
have been in whole or in part abolished or modified by
common agreement between the United States and
Great Britain. The regulations are to be submitted
every five years to a new examination, and to be modi-
fied if experience shows the need of change.

This award gave a great stimulus to pelagic sealing, by
taking it out of the category of illicit adventure or piracy.
On the contrary it slightly prolonged the process of de-
struction, by preventing close approach to the rookeries

236 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACV.

and preventing slaughter in May, June and July of the
American herd. These months were used by the sealers
in operations on the Russian herd, which by the ingen-
ious stroke of diplomacy already mentioned had been
deprived of the protection of a close season.

The final result has been, in the language of the Joint
Commission of Fur Seal Experts of 1897, that "in its
present condition the herd yields an inconsiderable re-
turn either to the lessees of the islands or to the owners
of the pelagic fleet."

In other words five years of the " protection and pres-
ervation " under the regulations of the Paris Tribunal have
achieved the commercial destruction of one of the two
most valuable and almost the sole remaining herds of this
most important of marine mammals. Its biological ex-
termination cannot be far distant, if these regulations are
continued, for it can hardly be supposed that the costly
defense of the breeding islands will be maintained by the
United States if no corresponding return is possible.

I trust that it will not seem unduly presumptuous for
me to express an opinion as to what the verdict of the
Paris Tribunal should legitimately have been.. In my
judgment it should have been declared :

1. That Bering Sea is not mare clausum * ; its waters
are not the exclusive property of Russia and the United
States.

2. That the ownership of the fur seal herds while the
animals are in the open sea cannot be recognized in ex-
isting international law or by existing precedent, as
belonging to the nations owning their breeding homes.

* In this and other matters of purely international law, I assume
the verdict of the tribunal is above question

THE PARIS TRIBUNAL OF ARBITRATION. 237

3. That the United States should therefore pay the
value of British vessels seized for killing fur seals in the
open sea.

4. That the value of these vessels and their equipment
should be ascertained by an acceptable jury of experts,
the question of the degree to which, if at all, contingent or
possible profits of future cruises should be considered to
be determined by the Tribunal of Arbitration.

5. That the " protection and preservation of the fur
seal " is a matter of importance to the interests of the
civilized world.

6. That the question of the regulations necessary to
this end should be left to a jury of natural history ex-
perts, familiar with the habits of marine mammalia and
competent to sift evidence concerning them.

7. That in case absolute or virtual prohibition be found
necessary to this end, as claimed by the American com-
mission, such prohibition be ordered by the Tribunal,
this order to have the force of international law, over all
nations consenting to the decision of the Tribunal.

8. In such case Canada should yield the possession of
certain recognized rights, inasmuch as prohibition of
pelagic sealing, with protection on land and sea, is tanta-
mount to ownership of the herd by the United States.

9. The legitimate money value of such rights, ascer-
tained by a proper jury or tribunal, the legal considera-
tions governing which to be determined and laid down
by the high tribunal itself, should be paid by the United
States.

10. That such decision should establish the precedent
for an international game law, whereby all animals, feral
or domesticated, crossing limits of territorial jurisdic-

238 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

tion in food-seeking or in annual migrations would be
protected in the same degree as if their habitat were
confined to the territory of a single nation. Such prece-
dents would govern the mismanaged fisheries of the
Great Lakes of America, the salmon fisheries of the
Rhine, the pearl beds of Ceylon, as well as the fur seal
and sea otter herds of Bering Sea. Such an interna-
tional agreement for the protection of valuable animals
would be a natural sequence to those agreements or
canons which have striven to abolish the slave-trade,
which have exterminated piracy and checked privateer-
ing, which have .made foreign travel possible, and which
are humanizing the terrible art of war. " Salus populi,
suprema lex." The ultimate purpose of all statutes is
the good of the people, not of one nation alone, but of
all the earth.

Such an ultimate agreement is indeed foreshadowed in
the regulations for " the protection and preservation of
the fur seal " and in the provision for the revision of
these regulations at the end of five years by the nations
directly concerned. This precedent may indeed prove
valuable in future efforts at arbitration in the interests of
humanity. If so, it is the sole worthy result of the Paris
Tribunal of Arbitration, and its one contribution to
international law.

Such a decision as that above indicated would have
been consistent with itself. It would have " protected
and preserved " the fur seal herd — the only important
matter at issue from a financial standpoint. It would
have done full justice to the rights of both Canada and
the United States while it would have paved the way for
the development of still broader principles. Such a

THE PARIS TRIBUNAL OF ARBITRATION. 239

decision would have given strength and dignity to the
plan of arbitration.

This summary of a vast and complicated case is of
necessity a very brief one, too brief to deal justly with
all its varied phases. We may, however, deduce from
it certain lessons, as to the organization of similar tribu-
nals in the future.

In case of future international tribunals of arbitration :

1. There must be an agreement as to all facts in
question based on the most thorough investigations of
competent experts in the subject in question, leaving to
the tribunal solely the decision of the legal or interna-
tional bearings of these facts with their financial estimate
if necessary ; or else,

2. We must grant to such international tribunal every
safeguard found necessary to the highest courts of law,
including time to mature its deliberations and investiga-
tions, power to call for persons and papers wherever
situated, power to cross-examine witnesses, to sift evi-
dence and to punish perjury or diplomacy or any other
attempt to deceive the court as to question of fact.

If the principle of arbitration is to win the support of
the two great Anglo-Saxon peoples its operations in prac-
tice must be worthy of their respect. It must indeed
be the Supreme Court of Christendom. It must be
composed of judges only, not of warring advocates, and
these judges must be as great in the science of jurispru-
dence as the generals they replace have been great in the
art of war. They must never be deceived as to fact or
law and their verdict must be the final word of an en-
lightened civilization as to the subject in question.

VI.
A CONTINUING CITY.

VI.
A CONTINUING CITY.*

The ideal of democracy is " government of the'people,
by the people and for the people." Such " a government
derives its just powers from the consent of the governed."
More than this, it is solely through the intelligent co-opera-
tion of the governed that its powers can be exercised.
The thought and force of each man is demanded and j
the composite will of the majority, when all is summed
up, is recognized as the will of the people. As to the
theory, all are in accord, but the need of operating
through representatives and civil servants complicates
matters of public administration and brings in many new
problems in addition to those arising from the development
of democracy.

For democracy brings with it no guarantee of good
government. Excellence of rule is not even its main pur-
pose, not good government but good people. There is
in government a higher function than economy, dignity
and effectiveness in public management. These are
important but they are not all. The .function of self-
government is the making of men. A republic is a huge

* Address before the New Charter Club of San Francisco,
April, i8g8.

243

244 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

training school in public affairs which will in time bring
better men, and thus produce the sole effective final
guarantee of good government. This is the intelligent
" consent of the governed." Such a training school
demands experiments in bad government as well as in
good. It demands experiments in blunders as well as
in successes. It demands the pain and humiliation of
loss and failure as well as the pride of victory or the joy
of gain. The surest way out of folly is to give full play
to its demands. " If you think that a law is unjust,"
said General Grant, " enforce it : the people will do the
rest." Each experiment must teach its own lesson.
The test of fitness for self-government is found in the
degree to which such lessons are heeded. In the long run
men are governed as well as they deserve. To demand
good government is the first essential in securing it.
" Eternal vigilance " is its price, and the results of apathy
are found in corruption and waste.

In one regard our fathers failed to see the line of de-
velopment of our forms of government. In the early
days the town-meeting was the safeguard of freedom.
In New England each citizen had a primary interest in
local affairs. The constant necessity for local action
kept this interes' alive. People care permanently only
when they can act. Men are indifferent toward that
which they cannot help. The town-meeting was the
local school in public administration. Its graduates were
sent on to farther duties, to the legislature of the state
or to the national congress. There many of them made
worthy names in the history of the administration. In
the old days " the people sent their wisest men to make
the laws." In their scattered villages with slow transpor-

A CONTINUING CITY. 245

tation and few newspapers, the people had but dim ideas
of national affairs. They therefore attended to their own
local affairs and gave their wisdom full play in managing
them. But with all this the people found a fascination in
national questions, however vaguely understood. What-
ever they could learn of them they used to their advan-
tage. The influence of the town-meeting worked its way
out to the state.

This growing interest in national matters was greatly
stimulated by the development of the appHed sciences.
The postal service, the railway train, the telegraph and
the daily newspaper have destroyed distances. What-
ever of importance happens in the civilized world is cor-
rectly known in every American household almost at once.
What happens near home in the town or county is not
thus known. The great events overshadow the lesser.
Local matters are inaccurately or sensationally reported.
They do not attract attention unless spiced with exaggera-
tion or distorted by caricature. Especially is this true of
matters of administration. The great national problems,
finance, taxation, colonial extension interest us all. The
fact that we are powerless to deal with them we lose sight
of. We have made up our minds in regard to them and
we all watch eagerly every attempt of our representatives
to carry our ideas into action. Once in four years all
manner of questions are or seem to be referred back to
the people, and to each of these public questions each
citizen is ready with some sort of iSi. response. Men who
were never able to pay their own debts have very positive
ideas of national finance. Those who cannot keep their
own children out of the streets know exactly what should
be our policy toward the " silent, sullen peoples, half devil

246 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

and haK child," who dwell in the antipodes. Men who
never had a bank account are self -constituted authorities as
to the national banking system, in which we are all to be
partners, those with nothing to lose as well as those with
something to gain. We shout for " principles " but in the
original thought of the fathers the common voter was
to select wise men, who should themselves be the judges
of principles. In the multiplicity of public officials we
have no certain knowledge of those who ask our suffrage.
Having no tests of character we judge them by their ex-
pressed opinions.

Thus the public attention is turned away from the local
affairs which furnished the business of the town-meeting.
It has degenerated into the caucus and is largely in con-
trol of those whose relation to government is personal and
selfish. The men who manage local politics care nothing
for shadows. They have their own end in view. Their
operations do not interest us because we cannot follow
them and we do not understand them. They are scan-
tily reported in the newspapers, and when favorable ac-
counts of evil transactions are desired the newspapers wiU
furnish them. The partisan organ is always ready to shield
its own rascals while it blackens impartially the fame of its
opponents. Thus it comes about that the details of our
government are worse managed as they come nearest to
the people. The general government absorbs nearly all
of the public attention. With all its faultsfithe adminis-
tration of affairs at Washington is in general better than
the administration anywhere else. It is in the light of
keener criticism. It is nearer to people's minds than
local administration is.

But it is much farther from their interests. The loss

A CONTINUING CITY. 247

through local waste and corruption affects the individual
man more than anything that Congress can do, or leave
undone. Say what we may, exaggerate as we may, the
cost of the appreciation of gold, the waste of extravagant
pensions, the loss through an ill-balanced monetary sys-
tem, — none of these nor all of these equal the waste of
municipal corruption. These become disastrous only as
they are added to the cost of local profligacy. The
injuries from defective sewage, from filthy streets, from
badly managed and badly taught schools, from saloon
politics, from bad roads, from the cultivation oi slums,
from adulterated food, from poisoned water, vastly out-
weigh in importance to the individual the great questions
of party politics for which we pass them by.

The complaint is made that American political affairs
are "insufferably parochial" and it is urged that the
remedy is to be found in a " vigorous foreign policy " of
which the details shall command the attention of the
people but with which they shall have no power to meddle.
But the affairs of a democracy ought to be " parochial "
and the people must have a hand in every one of them.
The more local and provincial its details, the better for
its administration and therefore the better for the people.
A democracy is a form of government adapted to mind-
ing its own business. That attention to foreign affairs
and large problems has smothered our interest in paro-
chial detailji of justice and economy, is the chief cause of
our failure in municipal government. The new destiny
of the United States with its idle hopes of commercial
greatness, keeps us from watching the tax collector and
the deputy sheriff. The town-meeting was the very es-
sence of parochialism. It was the tap root of our de-
17

248 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

mocracy and a certain failure in the process of govern-
ment by the people has resulted from its decline. In
large public affairs it is, " principles, not men " that first
concern us. In local administration it should be the
choice of men rather than political principles.

The evils of bad local administration are not peculiar
to our cities. County government almost everywhere is
just as ineffective. The county affairs of almost every
state are in the hands of party henchmen, who build up
under cover of local administration a huge machinery of
corruption. I make no sweeping charge against county
officers. These men in general are honest enough, and
at the worst they simply follow the letter of the law.
Law and rightfulness are not the same in this case. They
take nothing which is not legally theirs to take. The
defect is that of irresponsible management. There is no
head in county affairs and no direct responsibility to the
people. No one can be blamed if things go wrong nor is
one rewarded for faithful pubUc service. No one watches
the actions of county boards save those who gain by
wrong action. We have in all local affairs avoided the
tyranny of centralized power by the substitution of the
worse tyranny of official irresponsibility. There can be no
good government without direct responsibility to some
power adequate to control ; to some king, or governor,
or party, or the people.

In view of all this we deserve all the evikwe receive,
as well as all the good. The government of any com-
munity in all its grades is as good as the people are en-
titled to have. As we come to earn a better administra-
tion of national affairs, we find that we receive it. As
our interest in local affairs has waned so have grown the

A CONTINUING CITY. 249

evils of local corruption. In a democracy, the govern-
ment can be good only as the people demand good
government. We ask for good government on no other
terms. It may be that bad forms of government are re-
sponsible for misrule, rather than the people themselves.
Where this is the case the bad forms will be changed if
the people deserve any better. And the present general
movement for municipal reform shows that the people
are becoming more alive to the need of attention to
local affairs. If our republic is to be permanent, if
America is ever to have one " continuing city " we must
learn how to live in cities and in so living to guard our
property and our lives. As matters are we protect neither
life nor property, and the city is a center of degeneration
and waste.

Among the causes of ineffective local government we
may name the following ;

The lack of seriousness. As a people we have a very
fine sense of humor and it is exercjsed impartially in all
things. In our journals, corruption and inefficiency ap-
pear as a joke. A newspaper cartoon tells us the story,
and with this it ends. As cartoons are easily made and
may be as unjust as any other form of criticism, they cease
at length to be taken in evidence at all. An administra-
tive crime has no adequate punishment. We do not know
whether it has taken place or not, and in the hopelessly
good nature of the American people, whether it has taken
place or not, it is equally and speedily forgiven.

The lack of permanence in our population is the source
of other evils. Migration diverts attention from local
questions. A man who moves from place to place may
be just as good an American as one who stays at home.

2 so IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

— often a better, — ^but he is not so good a Califomian.
He is national rather than parochial in his interests, and
he is not so useful a citizen in his relation to local affairs.

The spoils system in politics is the greatest foe of de-
mocracy. In all its forms and ramifications, it is fatal
to good government. There can be no wise, economical
or dignified administration of public affairs when places
are given in reward of personal or p>artisan service. The
spoils system has been to a great degree eradicated in
the minor branches of national affairs, but in state, county,
and municipal politics it is almost everywhere still domi-
nant. It is even growing worse in many of our large
cities, because the purification of national administra-
tion has narrowed the sphere of its virulence. The
" pull " and the " push," the " combine " and the " solid
dozen " control our cities, and wherever the " boys "
are at " work " there is waste, ineffectiveness, and. cor-
ruption.

The spoils systern is in general dependent on the
organization of the votes of the unenlightened, the in-
different and the discontented. There are many causes
for the prevalence of what is known as social discontent.
Some of these a wise administration could avoid ; others
are inherent in human nature. Butthe political influence
of discontent is almost always evil. It is opposed to
law and order. It is opposed to hopefulness and pa-
tience. It is opposed to frugality and continuity of
purpose.

The predatory poor and the predatory rich feed upon
and propagate each other. Two of the most noxious
elements in our political life are the " friend ol the poor"
and the tool of the rich. Both are parasites who live by

A CONTINUING CITY. 251

the greed of those who take what they have not earned.
Very often the two characters are united in the same
person. The relation alters as opportunities develop,
just as the right bower of hearts becomes, as the trumps
change, the left bower of diamonds.

The hope of getting something for nothing which
draws thousands of men to our great cities, makes of
these same men the worst of citizens. Nothing worth
having ever goes for nothing except to the thief. Hence
arise^ great co-operative political associations, repre-
sented in the councils of every party, and whose sole
business is un4er party names to work the offices for " all
they are worth." Their interest in public affairs is to see
what can be made out of them. . By the promise of some-
thing for nothing they hold together the worst elements
of the community. Their work is done in the dark, and
their motto is, "Addition, division, and silence."

These associations encourage the public interest in
national affairs to divert it from local ones. They are
familiar with all the catch-words of the day. But while
people cry out for imperialism, expansionism, for sound
money, for free trade, for free silver, for free Cuba, —
whatever they please, the political rings devote them-
selves to the picking of pockets. They look after the
matters of street cleaning, police service, railway fran-
chises, saloon licenses, school furnishing, — and so long as
these profitable enterprises are in their hands they care
not who has the glory or who put up or down the figure-
heads of authority. If in their business they need these
figureheads they know how to own them without the
appearance of doing so.

Allied to the .habit of seeking something for nothing is

2S2 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

the disposition to look to national legislation as a relief
from personal discomfort. The recent movement on
Washington, of the Coxey " Commonweal Army " of
idlers is a visible sign of this disposition. It is not often
that prosperity waits on national legislation^ National
blunders have evil consequences, but there is not much to
be gained from any positive action. In general the most
that Congress can do is to repair its own past mistakes.
The real prosperity of a country comes from the prosper-
ity of the individual citizen and from that alone. If he
is frugal, industrious and sober, he will be the type of a
successful community. If each man should solve or even
try to solve his own labor problem, this problem would dis-
appear. If we were all good citizens we would have no
trouble with the management of our cities. But we are not
all good citizens ; and there are many rich and many poor
whose interests are served by bad administration. And
there are those who are weak in mind and weak in will,
who are swayed back and forth by the professional agitator.
An agitator, in general, is one who has nothing to lose,
and who finds his sustenance through the confusion of
others. Honest agitators there are, though such are often
insane, while the worst of those who foment discontent
are neither sane nor honest.

The chief source of failure in local government is,
however, due to lack of personal responsibility in ad-
ministration. This difficulty is the result of unwise
poUtical forms. It is therefore a matter which may be
readily detected, and which admits of remedy.

Whenever any important work is to be done it should
be done under one authority, controlled by one will,
and working to a definite end. In case of good admin-

A CONTINUING CITY. 253

istration the success will be distinct and unquestionable.
In case of failure there should be one person to be held
responsible. An individual head is necessary to the
control of an army, of a ship, of a team of horses, of a
railway, of a school. It is equally necessary to a city.
Wellington once said that " an army may get along very
well under a bad general ; it never will succeed under a
debating society." This is the vital principle in good
local administration. The fact that in our state consti-
tutions this principle has been neglected is one reason
why people have lost interest in local affairs. The
blame for failure rests on so many shoulders that practi-
cally no one can be held responsible for it.

Municipal government is not a branch of national
politics. A city is a business corporation, with business
powers and existing for business purposes. It must be
treated as such. It is not a confederation of states but
an association of men. In our local elections the people
of the city have to choose from a long series of names
selected in the dark by those who make such matters
their business. These men are mostly unknown to the
individual citizen. Those he knows he rarely trusts
and so he favors a close limitation of their authority.
They remain equally unknown at the close of their term
of ofifice, for they have little individual power or respon-
sibility. It is impossible to know whether their work is
well done or ill done. In most cases it is not distinctly
either, and in few cases can good services or bad serv-
ices materially affect permanence in office.

Political changes in city affairs come from changes in
national politics. A republic is governed by see-saw, a cer-
tain number changing their party allegiance as one party

254 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

or another fails, after four-years' trial, to satisfy their
ideas or interest. The city election goes with the rest.
For this condition the first remedy is to make munici-
pal matters important. To separate municipal from
general elections is a step in the right direction. But
it is a short step. To insure good government the ex-
ecutive head must be responsible for matters of adminis-
tration. He must control subordinates if he is held to
answer for them. He must have such freedom of
action that his character may be a matter of public con-
cern. A bad mayor of a city must have power to make
his badness felt ; else the people will not bestir them-
selves to get a good one. An unfit mayor should be a
distinct calamity. But with full responsibility, really bad
administration would rarely come. A poor driver of an
unruly team is better than no driver ; a weak general is
better than a debating society. A weak man or a bad
man under the public eye with full responsibility for his
actions sometimes becomes surprisingly capable. Re-
sponsibility brings caution. Caution leads men to seek
good advice, and to follow good advice is not very dif-
ferent from capability. But an effective responsibility,
as we shall see, can hardly be secured so long as cities
are ruled under federal forms, with constitutional checks
and balances, and a fixed tenure of office for each
official.

The desire for responsible government for cities is not,
as many suppose, a movement toward severity of indi-
vidual restriction. It is not a device of the rich for the
oppression of the poor. It is not a movement for a
larger police force, or the abatement of agitators
or other public nuisances. It arises simply from

A CONTINUING CITY. 25 J

the need to hold some one responsible for adminis-
tration. No one can be responsible for action be-
yond the limits of his power to act. In the national gov-
ernment this principle is recognized to some extent.
The President chooses his own administrative officers
and acts through their action. The governor of a state
has no voice in the choice of his cabinet. The county
has no executive officer at all, and the mayor of a city is
in the main a figurehead, with sometimes the special
function of police court judge.

In the English system of government the use of power
is not limited by constitutional checks and balances, but
by the unwritten will of the people. The Premier has un-
limited power, but he dare not use it, except with the
approval of the majority of the representatives of the
people. If he use it recklessly his administration comes
to an end and that at once and without warning. The
only check is liie disapproval of the party, and behind
the party, that of the people. Hence in party matters
the best men are put forward. The party leader is its
cleverest mouthpiece, its wisest administrator, or at least
the one whom his associates and the people naturally
rank as such.

In the American system are introduced a number of
checks and balances as preventers of mischief. These
serve as antidotes to tyranny but not to corruption or folly.
The evils which our fathers feared were mainly those of
centralized power, the force of arms, the pomp of im-
perialism, the domination of the church, the rule of the
aristocracy, inequality before the law. These were the
ills from which they had fled in England. These evils
they would forever keep away from the shores of the

256 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

new republic. They had no experience in industrial
miscalculations nor in financial blunders. The con-
gestion of population in cities was unforeseen by them.
They knew nothing of the collective folly of mobs, the
enterprise of corporations, nor the pertinency of those
who live by sucking blood wherever blood is found.

They tried to prevent tyranny by scattering power
among many functionaries, each one to be a check upon
the others. In one state it was decreed that a member
of the state council should always sleep with the governor
to prevent him from developing any scheme of oppres-
_^ion.

Such an arrangement tended to prevent personal
tyranny but it opened the way to many abuses, and it is
from such governmental methods that the evils of the
" Ring system " arise. If the governor were wicked he
might corrupt the councilor. If he were weak the
councilor might manipulate him. From such begin-
nings came the mistake of trying to prevent tyranny by
weakening government rather than by strengthening re-
sponsibiUty. It was thought to make officials harmless
by making them powerless. Thus we succeeded in dis-
placing individual tyranny by organized tyranny, ofiicial
tyranny, by unofficial tyranny. When a thing has to be
done there must be the power to do it. If the official
is prevented by hampering forms of law, it will be infor-
mally and illegally done by his political boss.

England has never tried to prevent abuse of adminis-
trative authority, by weakening power or scattering re-
sponsibility. Her ideal has been not limited authority
but " conditional authority." No high efficiency can
exist without a wide range of discretion. Complete and

A CONTINUING CITY. 257

immediate responsibility is the only condition necessary
for the safe exercise of power. " An English prime min-
ister can do anything, — always with this reservation, that
if he doesn't do the right thing he may cease to be prime
minister and that without notice."

The most essential condition of successful government
is therefore singleness of purpose. Treat the collective
interests of a city as you would those of a great corpo-
ration. Make the mayor the trupted representative of
the corporation, to be discarded by it if he prove false
to his trust. This plan has proved everywhere successful
in Great Britain. It should succeed equally well in the
United States. When this is done there is room for
great extension of collective action. Let the city have
a political see-saw of its own independent of that arising
from national elections. Let the mayor be personally
responsible for the fitness and honesty of the subordinate
heads of departments. Let hini hold each of them in
turn responsible for those under their direction. In
business places have only those who know their business.
Emphasize men, not principles. Men are tangible and
can be reached ; party principles are vague and decep-
tive. Let everything stand in open hght ; thus unclean
men who work in darkness only have no interest in it.
In most branches of the civil service of cities technical
training is vitally important. The man who knows how
to do a thing is the only one who will do it in the right
way.

The authority given must be commensurate with the
service required. One individual must be held respon-
sible for the whole of one transaction. A stage coach
on a mountain road would nbt be rendered safer with

258 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

four drivers one for each horse, or one for each of the
guiding reins. Doubtless the coach might not be driven
on the wrong road under such conditions, but it would
stand a good chance to be overturned.

But how shall the driver of the coach be selected and
what shall be the term of his services ? Obviously those
who ride must choose and he must hold the reins only
50 long as he commands the confidence of his passengers.
Accepting the principle of the majority rule as the only
principle practicable in public affairs the driver should
hold his place as long as his acts are approved by the
majority of those whom he serves.

It is plain that a fixed tenure of office regardless of
conduct is an unnatural and arbitrary arrangement. It
has the advantage of stability of plan, but it permits the
development of schemes adverse to the good of the peo-
ple. In the case of the stage coach the question of con-
fidence can be settled in a moment and without for-
mality. In the case of a city the method must be
different ; the principle is not. In such cases the people
cannot act as individuals in a mass-meeting. Obviously
they must be represented in some form of a council or a
congress. That body will be most effective which most
perfectly reflects the will of the people in all its organ-
izations, tendencies and ramifications, the stupid and the
evil as well as the wise and good, and each in its degree.
To this end some form of election by proportional rep-
resentation is apparently necessary. The British system
recognizes this and its plan has great claim on my con-
fidence because it has shown itself successful. Each
voter in the community selects a certain number of men
according to the details of the plan chosen. He votes

A CONTINUING CITY. 259

for these as his personal representatives in the city
council. Those men having the greatest number of votes
are chosen. The larger the council the more perfectly
representative and the less subject to illegitimate in-
fluences. The smaller, the more effective in direct action
which is a matter of minor importance, as the council
should be a regulative rather than an administrative or
even a legislative body. The council once chosen, selects
the mayor, whose power is limited chiefly by the coun-
cil's own approval. If the mayor carries the council with
him he can develop the most elaborate plans in all details.
If the majority come to distrust him his authority is with-
drawn and that on the shortest notice.

The majority of the council are likely to put forward
the best man of the number for the sake of their own,
prestige. Carefully made minor appointments usuallyX
follow as a matter of course. The checks and balances
of charter and constitution are unnecessary, for the
executive will not often dare to oppose the teachings of
common sense. Elaborate rules controlling the civil
service are scarcely necessary because the city business
must be conducted on business principles, wherever full
personal responsibility exists. Fraud or favoritism would
destroy confidence. The loss of confidence would turn
the power over to the minority. Thus such a plan re-
sults in England. It would work in the same way with
us.

In England this general system holds in parliamentary
matters as well as in local affairs. The whole of Great
Britain and Ireland becomes a unit in matters of admin-
istration, the empire being in no sense a federation in its
governmental relations. The federal system with its

26o IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

wheels within wheels makes the adoption of a similar
system at Washington a matter of doubtful expediency.
In the use of the federal system for non-federal relations
we find the most serious mistake in American local
government. The Union is a federation of sovereign
states, having interests more or less divergent and origi-
nally swayed by deep and overmastering jealousies. The
checks and balances of our constitution were intended in
large degree to protect the individual state from the
possible tyranny of the others. The separation of exec-
utive, legislative and judicial functions and the establish-
ment of the two houses of Congress were all matters as-
sociated with the protection of states under federal
relations. Whether the need for these safeguards is past
or whether the higher safeguard of party responsibility
should take their place, as in England, or whether some
minor modification in that direction would be still better,
are questions I cannot discuss here. They are vitally
important but they do not touch our present problem.

It was, however, beyond a doubt, a serious error to
take the forms of federal union as the type of local
government. The Union is a federation of sovereign
states, but the state is not a federation of sovereign coun-
ties. The county is an artificial division of the state
made for convenience of administration. The individual
county stands in no danger from the tyranny of the ma-
jority. In like manner we cannot regard the county as
a federation of townships. Still less is the city a federa-
tion of wards. Yet in our choice of aldermen it is
treated as such. By a skilful arrangement of wards and
a suitable manipulation of the caucus it is possible to
partly disfranchise the inhabitants of some of theni.

A CONTINUING CITY. 261

Thus the better elements remain in large degree unre-
presented in our city councils. To destroy the tyranny
of the ward heeler we limit his authority. We make the
various ofBcials of the city independent of one another
and all of them responsible to nobody. They are bound
by the iron provisions of the charter perhaps, but these
provisions do not enforce themselves. To reduce power
used in the daylight means its greater exercise in the
dark.

The system of proportional representation destroys, in
a large degree, the illegitimate power of cliques and
associations. It sets aside the false idea of federation
when no federation exists, and it tends to unify adminis-
tration and responsibility of the city as a unit. The city
council thus chosen will have good elements and bad
elements. It is simply an epitome of the people with an
emphasis laid on the greater intelligence, for people
under these conditions are less likely to vote for men
they do not know, or whom they regard as incompetent
or derelict.

The business of such a council is supervision rather
than legislation and its chief function that of fusing the
public opinion into a single indivisible will. This will
the mayor represents so long as his course receives its
approval and his will is reflected in his subordinates and
heads of departments.

Exactly this principle applies to the successful control
of affairs of great corporations. The president of a
railroad has the most extended powers, if he satisfies the
directors, who in turn represent the stockholders. In
proportion as such power and its attendant responsibli-
ity are real will be the success of the road, other matters

262 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

being of course equal. If the president abuse his powers
it will be when the directors neglect their duties. For
popular ignorance or indifference, no system can offer a
remedy.

The control of American universities has been likewise
successful in the degree to which it approaches this
model. The freer the rein given the president, other
things being equal, the more effective the work of the
institution. But this free rein must take with it the
watchful confidence of boards of trustees or of the alumni,
or of the public for which the institution exists. The
majestic work of Dr. Eliot at Harvard well exemplifies
all this. With very definite, very wise and very ad-
vanced views of all educational problems, he has taken
full rein in carrying them out. But he has sought at the
same time to carry with him the confidence and co-oper-
ation of graduates, faculty and overseers. Without this
confidence, freely given because fully deserved. Harvard
University could never have been made what it is.

In few branches of the public service is the spoils sys-
tem so deeply intrenched as in the public schools. In
no other place can it do a tithe of the mischief. It
shows itself on the one hand in the wanton selection
of incompetents or favorites ; on the other, in the provis-
ion of life tenures for worthless persons its evil is equally
prominent. No teacher should be chosen save for effi-
ciency, no teacher should be retained unless this effi-
ciency continues. If appointments are on the basis of
merit only, there is no danger of wanton removals, and
any law protecting a teacher from dismissal works against
the interests of the children, a party whose interests in
some of our great cities have been totally ignored. What

A CONTINUING CITY. 263

with the strife on account of life tenures of teachers
chosen by the trustees in the past, and with the desire
of present trustees to provide similarly for their own in-
digent relatives, the public schools of at least one of our
great cities are worse than no schools at all. To use
positions in the schools for purposes of charity is to use
them for corruption. If relieved from the great expenses
now incurred better schools would arise under private
control. The remedy for this condition is not to abol-
ish public schools. It is not the institution which is
discredited but our management of it ; and this through
our own lack of interest and our bad administrative
methods. The former no doubt, is in part an outgrowth
from the latter. Our duty is to repeal all statutes which
limit responsibility, place the schools in the hands of a
competent superintendent and adopt such forms as will
hold this superintendent to a real and constant re-
sponsibility.

Our varied failures in local administration are there-
fore in great part the results of efforts to make federal
forms of government do the impossible and of our at-
tempts to hold men to responsibility without giving
them power. The affairs of no business corporation
could be conducted in such a fashion without immediate
disaster. If these are necessary methods of " American-
ism," they are also methods of bankruptcy. No city,
or county or state can be well governed that does not
associate with exercise of authority, personal responsi-
bility for its results.

The first need in good government is to enlist the serv-
ices of men who know what ought to be done, and who

have the will and the virtue to do it. Such men are
18

264 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

^^

ailed forth when the people feel the need of them. As
/matters now are we do not need good men because we
have no way of using them. In public office they can
only watch and do nothing. This does not suffice for a
man of action. So he will rather go on with his own af'
fairs which he can control and for which he' is actually
responsible. Thus the public affairs fall into the con-
trol of co-operative associations of thieves, for which the
city furnishes a figurehead. All constitutional checks
and balances in administration are of but slight impor-
tance compared with the personality of men. Let us
try men in our public affairs, and see if Americanism is
not strengthened by the change.

VII.
THK CAPTAIN SLEEPS.

VII.
THE CAPTAIN SLEEPS.*

In the Outlook for April 22 is an editorial record of
the " Philippine history " which to me is very painful
reading. Its narrative of alleged facts doubtless repre-
sents the record of what the authorities of the United
States wished to do, and of what thousands of good people
think has been done. But it is not " Philippine history."
Our rulers have shown the most singular misconceptions
of the nature of the tropics and their inhabitants, while
our own people have equally forgotten the nature of our
own government, its strength, its limitations and the
principles on which it rests. As a result we are trjdng
to hold a large and active population by force, without
visible plan or purpose, or reason for so doing. In the
process we find ourselves in the midst of a war of exter-
mination, one of the most horrible in the records of
civilization. These people fight for freedom. This we
understand. We fight for law and order, so we are told,
because without examination of the facts, we assume
that the first republic of Asia would be unable to main-
tain order. They fight for freedom because they can
see with their own eyes that the first republic of America
urges on them a military despotism. If we could under-

* Letter to the editor of the Outlook, April 26, 1899.

267

268 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

stand each other better, we should each know that the
real purposes of the other are more rational than they
seem.

The Outlook passes lightly over the huge blunders
which have brought on this war, mistakes that would
bring on war an)fwhere whenever made. Doubtless these
delays and blunders were well intentioned, but the fates
judge men and nations by the results, not the purposes,
of their acts. Good intentions lie at the bottom of the
greatest crimes of history. The present writer has
opposed federal union with the Filipinos, because how-
ever just morally, such unequal yoking politically would
help neither them nor us. Against imperial or colonial
dominion he is opposed from principle, knowing that
industrial success in " control of the tropics " is incon-
sistent with " equality before the law." The justification
for slavery and that of the " Crown Colony " is one and the
same, nor is there appreciable difference in the results.
The empire can exist, the republic cannot, with such
dominion accepted as part of its function.

But these theoretical considerations have little part
to-day. It is no longer a question of imperialism or of
expansion. It is one of saving the lives of an innocent
people, of saving the honor and self-respect of our own
republic. We can have no future in these islands save
that which comes through the present.

Does the Outlook know what really takes place in the
Philippines ? Of course it is familiar with official dis-
patches and with the text of proclamations. These tell
of a difficult task slowly and unwillingly accomplished,
with deeds of heroism on the part of brave men, and the
loss of precious lives both Saxon and Malay.

THE CAPTAIN SLEEPS. 269

This is trae, but it is not all. We fail to read between
the lines. For the rest, we must take the word of naval
officers and of soldiers, sick or wounded, sent back to
their homes. California was the first to catch the fever
of expansion because it is nearest the glamour of the
Orient. It will be the first to recover, because it first
meets face to face the heroes of Manila.

Does the Outlook know what these men have to say?

Their words contradict the Spanish slander of Aguinaldo
as a bribed soldier of fortune. They show him rather
as a patriot, the ally of our leader, the valued " prot6g6 "
of men who had authority to ask his help. They tell of
his weary waiting for some indication of purpose on the
part of the Unitea States government, of the Constitu-
tional Convention at Malolos, of the adoption after
a long debate of the principle of religious equality in a
country of Catholics, of the choice of a President by
a free ballot ; of the Cabinet and. Congress containing
educated men, many of them graduates of Universities
of Europe. They tell us that, till the fatal Fifth of
February, " life and property was as safe in the Malolos
as in San Francisco " and that the sole anarchy and de-
struction of property which has taken place in any of these
islands since Manila surrendered has been in the few
square miles occupied by our troops. Except about
Manila and Iloilo, selt-government of the natives is the
sole government existing to-day, apparently the sole which
has ever existed. Except in Luzon apparently no other
is contemplated. The Mohammedan sultan still enjoys
undisturbed sway, and I am told that we pay him the
same tribute he exacted from Spain. Even savage races
for the most part are at peace within themselves. They

270 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

are savage only to the alien invader. A wasp's nest is
a home of peace till an alien torce assails it.

What does the man who was on the ground say to the
argument that " we destroyed the only stable govern-
ment in the Philippines : is it our duty to set up another
like it in its place? Is military despotism the only gov-
ernment we know how to set up? Does the Outlook
know what Manila is becoming under military rule?
We hear of four hundred saloons on the Escolta, where
two were before : that twenty-one per cent, of our sol-
diers are attacked by venereal disease, that according to
the belief of the soldiers, " even the pigs and dogs on
the streets have the syphilis."

Does the Outlook realize that Malabon, a prosperous
suburb of Manila, a town in which the kindly and culti-
vated people had shown special courtesies to the officers
and men of the McCuUough, was burned to the ground by
the men of the Monterey, under orders from the comman-
dant at Manila. It is easier to hold a city that has no
suburbs ; for this reason the town was burned and its
people driven out to starve in the swamps.

Does the Outlook know how it feels for a young man of
culture to set the torch to " two hundred acres of houses "
while the people are kneeling and praying at his feet ?

Does the Outlook realize the picture of the "half-
naked savages " driven from Santa Ana, while in one of
their spacious " huts " live pianos were found, one of
which was thrown out of the second story window, to
make more room for something else ?

Does the Outlook understand that of 30,000 or more
Filipinos slaughtered thus far, half are estimated to have
been non-combatants?

THE CAPTAIN SLEEPS. 27 1

Does the Outlook know that our soldiers say that they
were ordered to fire on white flags? Does it remember
that since February 6th, when audience was refused to
Aguinaldo, these people have had no chance to be heard ?

Does the Outlook know that some regiments of United
States troops have "taken no prisoners? "

Does the Outlook know that the general in command
is described as a man who rarely leaves his ofifice, where
he conscientiously devotes himself to the adding of
accounts, " to the work of a quartermaster's clerk? "
Does it know that the simple-hearted, loyal hero of
Manila is conscientiously sacrificing his reputation and
his judgment because he serves the United States under
the orders of the military commander?

Does the Outlook know why all the general officers
who can get away, escape from Manila? Can it be as
the soldiers say that they would avoid responsibility for
what they cannot help ?

Does the Outlook realize that few of the officers at
Manila have any military training, and that over many
of the bravest troops in the world are placed as com-
missioned officers men who were lawyers, insurance
agents, printers, elevator boys, bartenders, and drivers
of beer-wagons, a year ago in civil life ?

Does the Outlook reJalize the effect of the promiscuous
looting of towns and the murder of " every man that
sticks his head out of the door " on the men engaged
in it?

Some of them glory in it. " It is like a Colorado
rabbit drive on a grand scale." More loathe the very
idea of war and everything and every man concerned
in it.

272 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

Does the Outlook realize the effect on the country
when both these classes return home ?

One soldier says, « If the United States were on fire
from end to end, I would never raise my hand to put it
out." Another would " toss in a blanket the ofificials at
Washington, as we toss a cheating corporal." Another
says in print, referring to the abuse of the soldiers by
their superiors in pay :

" Yes, I knew that war would be hell before I got into it. But
I did not know that war would be Hell deliberately and fanati-
cally inflicted. I expected to sleep in mud puddles with my head
on a stone for a pillow, and go hungry for days on forced marches
and away from a base of supplies. But I never dreamed that I
would have to sleep in leaky and exposed sheds when there was
plenty of good shelter elsewhere, and when thirty officers had fine
apartments in which there was room for five hundred men ;
neither did I expect to be fed on coffee grounds and foul canned
meat for weeks when we were right next to a base of supplies,
and when our officers lived on the choice of the commissary's de-
partment. Now any young man whose ire will not arouse at
such deliberate deviltry is not worthy to live under despotic
Russia.

Does the Outlook believe that a country as large as
California and with about as many people as Mexico,
and quite as capable and civilized on the average, can
be subdued by any army the American people will main-
tain? Can it be held when once subdued? Why must
it be subdued ? Why ought it to be ?

It is true enough that not all these people are in arms
against us. But all with whom we have come in contact
are. If we try to bring " Law and order " to Mindanao,
do we not know that the whole island will be in flames?
Has the Outlook heard from one high in authority, that
we have " to kill off half the population " of these islands

THE CAPTAIN SLEEPS. 2/3

in order " to give good government to the rest? " Does
the Outlook realize " what is the character of that calm
when the law and the slaveholder prevail?" Has it
heard from high authority that " we must hold up the
American flag even if we shoot down ten millions of
niggers, dagoes and missing links?" It maybe that
its staff will become so bloody that no free man will
grasp it.

Does the Outlook believe that the commanding general
with 30,000 troops, mostly volunteers held over time,
will conquer the Filipinos in a thousand years? Has
the Outlook read the history of the Straits Settlements?
Does the Outlook believe that with 100,000 men, a
brave Indian fighter can conquer these people in five
years ? Does the Outlook know the story of Achin ? Is
it true that our Consul at Manila declares that he does
not expect to live to see the end of this war?

Has the Outlook read the story of Mexico? Does it
know how a feeble people cast off an alien yoke and
spurned foreign help, developing at last into a peaceful,
strong and orderly nation solely through forces within
itself?

Now it may be that soldiers exaggerate the things they
have seen. Perhaps so. I may be deceived by them,
and the nightmare I have conjured up may be my own
and theirs. But the men I have trusted had learned to
see clearly when they left California. Their words are
not so mild as those I have chosen. If the Outlook knew
all that has come to those of us in California who have
sought for the truth, it would set up no plea of mitigation.
The magazines are full of stories of " What I did in
Cuba " from officers who took part in that campaign.

274 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

But no one prints " What I saw in Luzon." Not glory
but the court-martial awaits the man who saw. If it
were seen by the country, the country would bum with
wrath hotter than the flames that consumed Malabon.

In such case, what is the duty of the President? What
is the duty of Congress? What of Christian citizens?
What of the editor of the Christian journal?

Do what you will with the Philippines, if you can do
it in peace — but stop this war.

It is our fault and ours alone that this war began. It
is our crime that it continues.

We make no criticism of the kindly and popular
President of the United States, save this one : He does
not realize the wild fury of the forces he has unwillingly
and unwittingly brought into action. These must be
kept instantly and constantly in hand. The authority to
do rests with him alone, and if ever " strenuous life "
was needed in the nation, it is in the guiding hand of
to-day. The ship is on fire. The Captain sleeps. The
sailors storm in vain at his door. When he shall rise,
we doff our hats in respectful obeisance. If we have
brought a false alarm, on our heads rests the penalty.

VIII.
THE LAST OF THK PURITANS.

VIII.
THE LAST OF THE PURITANS.*

I HAVE a word to say of Thoreau, and of an episode
which brought his character into bold relief, and which
has fairly earned for him a place in American history, as
well as in our literature.

I do not wish now to give any account of the life of
Thoreau. In the preface to his volume called " Excur-
sions " you will find a biographical sketch, written by
the loving hand of Mr. Emerson, his neighbor and friend.
Neither shall I enter into any justification of Thoreau's
peculiar mode of life, nor shall I describe the famous
cabin in the pine woods by Waldon Pond, already be-
coming the Mecca of the Order of Saunterers, whose
great prophet was Thoreau. His profession of land-
surveyor was one naturally adopted by him ; for to him
every hill and forest was a being, each with its own in-
dividuality. This profession kept him in the fields and
woods, with the sky over his head and the mold under
his feet. It paid him the money needed for his daily
wants, and he cared for no more.

He seldom went far away from Concord, and, in a

*Address before the California State Normal School, at San

Jose, 1892.

277

278 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

half-plajrful way, he used to view everything in the world
from a Concord standpoint. All the grandest trees grew
there and all the rarest flowers and nearly all the phe-
nomena of nature could be observed at Concord.

" Nothing can be hoped of you," he said, "if this bit
-of mold under your feet is not sweeter to you than any
other in this world — in any world."

Although one of the most acute of observers, Thoreau
was never reckoned among the scientific men of his time.
He was never a member of any Natural History Society,
nor of any Academy of Sciences, bodies which, in a gen-
eral way, he held in not altogether unmerited contempt.
When men band together for the study of nature, they
first draft a long constitution, with its attendant by-laws,
and then proceed to the election of officers, and, by and
by, the study of nature becomes subordinate to the
maintenance of the organization.

In technical scientific work, Thoreau took little pleas-
ure. It is often pedantic, often bloodless, and often it
is a source of inspiration only to him by whom the work
is done. Animals and plants were interesting to him, not
in their structure and genealogical affinities, but in their re-
lations to his mind. He loved wild things, not alone for
themselves, but for the tonic effect of their savagery upon
him.

" I wish to speak a word for nature," he said, " for
absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a
freedom and culture merely civil, to regard man as an
inhabitant, a part and parcel of nature, rather than as a
member of society. I wish to make an extreme state-
ment ; if so, I may make an emphatic one, for there are
enough champions of civilization. The minister and the

THE LAST OF THE PURITANS. 279

school committees, and every one of you, will take care
of that."

To Thoreau's admirers, he is the prophet of the fields
and woods, the interpreter of nature, and his every word
has to them the deepest significance. He is the man who

" Lives all alone, close to the bone,
And where life is sweetest, constantly eatest."

They resent all criticism of his life or his words. They
are impatient of all analysis of his methods or : of his
motives, and a word of praise of him is the surest pass-
port to their good graces.

But the critics sometimes miss the inner harmony
which Thoreau's admirers see, and discern only queer
paradoxes and extravagances of statement where the
others hear the voice of nature's oracle. With most lit-
erary men, the power of disposition of those who know
or understand their writings is in some degree a matter
of Uterary culture. It is hardly so in the case of Tho-
reau.

The most illiterate man I know who had ever heard of
Thoreau, Mr. Barney Mullins, of Freedom Center, Outa-
gamie County, Wisconsin, was a most ardent admirer of
Thoreau, while the most eminent critic in America, James
Russell Lowell, does him scant justice. To Lowell, the
finest thoughts of Thoreau are but strawberries from
Emerson's garden, and other critics have followed back
these same strawberries through Emerson's to still older
gardens, among them to that of Sir Thomas Browne.

But, setting the critics aside, let me tell you about
Barney Mullins. Twenty years ago, I lived for a year in
the northern part of Wisconsin. The snow is very deep
19

28o IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

in the winter there, and once I rode into town through
the snowbanks on a sled drawn by two oxen and driven
by Barney MuUins. Barney was bom on the banks of
Killarney, and he could scarcely be said to speak the
English language. He told me that before he came to
Freedom Centre he had lived in a town called Concord,
in Massachusetts. I asked him if he had happened to
know a man there by the name of Henry Thoreau. He
at once grew enthusiastic and he said, among other
things : " Mr. Thoreau was a land-surveyor in Concord.
I knew him well. He had a way of his own, and he
didn't care much about money ; but if there ever was a
gentleman alive, he was one."

Barney seemed much saddened when I told him that
Mr. Thoreau had been dead a dozen years. On part-
ing, he asked me to come out sometime to Freedom
Centre, and to spend a night with him. He hadn't
much of a room to offer me, but there was always a place
in his house for a friend of Mr. Thoreau. Such is the
feeling of this guild of lovers of Thoreau, and some of
you may come to belong to it.

Here is a test for you. Thoreau says : " I long ago
lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am
still on their trail. Many are the travelers I have spoken
to regarding them, describing their tracks, and what
calls they answered to. I have met one or two who
have heard the hound and the tramp of the horse, and
even seen the dove disappear behind the cloud, and
they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had
lost them themselves."

Now, if any of you, in your dreams, have heard the
horse, or seen the sunshine on the dove's wings, you may

THE LAST OF THE PURITANS. 28 1

join in the search. If not, you may close the book, for
Thoreau has not written for you.

This Thoreau guild is composed, as he himself says,
" of knights of a new, or, rather, an old order, not eques-
trians or chevaUers, not Ritters, or riders, but walkers, a
still more ancient and honorable class, I trust."

" I have met," he says, " but one or two persons who
understand the art of walking; who had a genius for
sauntering, which word is beautifully derived from idle
people who roved about the country in the Middle Ages
and asked charity, under pretense of going • a la Sainie
Terre' — a Sainte-terrer, a Holy- Lander. They who
never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pre-
tend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds ; but they
who go there are saunterers, in the good sense. Every
walk is a kind of crusade preached by some Peter the
Hermit within us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy
Land from the hands of the Infidels.

"It is true that we are but faint-hearted crusaders,
who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises.
Our expeditions are but tours, and come round again at
evening to the old hearth-side from which we set out.
Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go
forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of
undying adventure, never to return, prepared to send
back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate
kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother,
and brother and sister, and wife and child, and friends ;
if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and
settled all your affairs, and are a free man, you are ready
for a walk."

Though a severe critic of conventional follies, Thoreau

282 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

was always a hopeful man ; and no liner rebuke to the
philosophy of Pessimism was ever given than in these
words of his : " I know of no more encouraging fact
than the unquestionable ability of a man to elevate his
life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able
to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so
make a few objects beautiful ; but it is far more glorious
to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium
through which we look. This, morally, we can do."

But it is not of Thoreau as a saunterer, or as nat-
uralist, or as an essayist, that I wish to speak, but as
a moralist, and this in relation to American politics.
Thoreau lived in a dark day of our political history. At
one time he made a declaration of independence in a
small way, and refused allegiance and poll-tax to a Govern-
ment built on a comer-stone of human slavery. Be-
cause of this he was put into jail, where he remained one
night, and where he made some curious observations on
his townspeople as viewed from the inside of the bars.
Emerson came along in the morning, and asked him what
he was there for. " Why a.ieyou not in here, Mr. Emer-
son? " was his reply; for it seemed to him that no man
had the right to be free in a country where some men
were slaves.

"Voting for the right," Thoreau said, "is doing noth-
ing for it ; it is only expressing feebly your desire that
right should prevail." He would not for an instant .
recognize that political organization as his government
which was the slave's government also. " In fact," he
said, " I will quietly, after my fashion, declare war with
the State. Under a government which imprisons any
unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

THE LAST OF THE tURITANS. 283

I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, or
if one honest man in this State of Massachusetts, ceas-
ing to remain in this copartnership, should be locked
up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition
of slavery in America. It matters not how small the
beginning may seem to be, what is once well done is
done forever."

Thoreau's friends paid his taxes for him, and he was
set free, so that the whole affair seemed like a joke.
Yet, as Robert Lewis Stevenson says, " If his example
had been followed by a hundred, or by thirty of his
followers, it would have greatly precipitated the era of
freedom and justice. We feel the misdeeds of our
country with so little fervor, for we are not witnesses to
the suffering they cause. But when we see them awake
an active horror in our fellow-men; when we see a
neighbor prefer to lie in prison than be so much as
passively implicated in their perpetration, even the
dullest of us will begin to realize them with a quicker
pulse."

In the feeling that a wrong, no matter how great, must
fall before the determined assault of a man, no matter
how weak, Thoreau found the reason for his action.
The operation of the laws of God is like an incontrol-
lable torrent. Nothing can stand before them; but
the work of a single man may set the torrent in motion
which will sweep away the accumulations of centuries of
wrong.

There is a long chapter in our national history which
is not a glorious records Most of us are too young to
remember much of politics under the Fugitive Slave
Law, or to understand the deference which politicians

284 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

of every grade then paid to the peculiar institution. It
was in those days in the Middle West that Kentucky
blackguards, backed by the laws of the United States,
and aided not by Northern blackguards alone, but
by many of the best citizens of those States, chased
runaway slaves through the streets of our Northern
capitals.

And not the politicians alone, but the teachers and
preachers, took their turn in paying tribute to Csesar.
We were told that the Bible itself was a champion of
slavery. Two of our greatest theologians in the North
declared at Princeton and at Bowdoin in the name of
the Higher Law, that slavery was a holy thing, which
the Lord, who cursed Canaan, would ever uphold.

For these men believed sincerely that the poor and
the weak should serve the strong and the wise for their
own good as well as for material prosperity. The Un-
known God of the nations, they know not how to wor-
ship cares for- manhood, not order nor prosperity. For
every drop of blood drawn by the lash in their despotic
benevolence. He drew " another by the sword."

In those days there came a man from the West — a
tall, gaunt, grizzly, shaggy-haired. God-fearing man, a
son of the Puritans, whose ancestors came over on the
Mayflower. A dangerous fanatic or lunatic, he was called,
and, with the aid of a few poor negroes whom he had
stolen from slavery, he defied the power of this whole
slave-catching United States. A little square brick build-
ing, once a sort of car-shop, stands near the railway
station in the town of Harper's Ferry, with the moun-
tain wall not far behind it, and the Potomac River run-
ning below. And from this building was fired the shot

THE LAST OF THE PURITANS, 28$

which pierced the heart of slavery. And the Governor
of Virginia captured this man, and took him out and
hung him, and laid his body in the grave, where it still
lies moldering. But there was part of him not in the
jurisdiction of Virginia, a part which tiiey could neither
hang nor bury ; and, to the infinite surprise of the Gov-
ernor of Virgmia, his soul went marching on.

When they heard in Concord that John Brown had
been captured, and was soon to be hung, Thoreau sent
notice through the city that he would speak in the public
hall on the condition and character of John Brown, on
Sunday evening, and invited all to be present.

The Republican Committee and the Committee of the
Abolitionists sent word to him that this was no time to
speak ; to discuss such matters then was premature and
inadvisable. He replied : " I did not send to you for
advice, but to tell you that I am going to speak." The
selectmen of Concord dared neither grant nor refuse him
the hall. At last they ventured to lose the key in a
place where they thought he could find it.

This address of Thoreau, " A Plea for Captain John
Brown," should be a classic in American history. We
do not always realize that the time of American history
is now. The dates of the settlement of Jamestown, arid
Plymouth, and St. Augustine do not constitute our his-
tory. Columbus did not discover us. In a high sense,
the true America is barely thirty ypars old, and its first
President was Abraham Lincoln.

We in the North are a little impatient at times, and
our politicians, who are not always our best citizens,
mutter terrible oaths, especially in the month of October,
because the South is not yet wholly regenerate, because

286 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY,

not all which sprang from the ashes of the slave-pen
were angels of light.

But let us be patient while the world moves on. Forty
years ago not only the banks of the Yazoo and the
Chattahoochee, but those of the Hudson, and the Charles,
and the Wabash, were under the lash. On the eve of
John Brown's hanging not half a dozen men in the city
of Concord, the most intellectual town in New England,
the home of Emerson, and Hawthorne, and Alcott, dared
say that they felt any respect fof the man or sympathy
for the cause for which he died.

I wish to quote a few passages from this " Plea for
Captain John Brown." To fully realize its power, you
should read it all for yourselves. You must put your-
selves back into history, now already seeming almost
ancient history to us, to the period when Buchanan was
President — the terrible sultry lull just before the great
storm. You must picture the audience of the best peo-
ple in Massachusetts, half-sympathizing with Captain
Brown, half afraid of being guilty of treason in so doing.
You must picture the speaker, with his clear-cut, earnest
features and penetrating voice. No preacher, no politi-
cian, no professional reformer, no Republican, no Demo-
crat ; a man who never voted ; a naturalist whose com-
panions were the flowers and the birds, the trees and
the squirrels. It was the voice of Nature in protest
against slavery and in plea for Captain Brown.

" My respect for my fellow-men," said Thoreau, " is
not being increased these days. I have noticed the
cold-blooded way in which men speak of this event, as
if an ordinary malefactor, though one of unusual pluck,

THE LAST OF THE PURITANS. 287

• the gamest man I ever saw,' the Governor of Virginia
said, had been caught and was about to be hung. He
was not thinking of his foes when the Governor of
Virginia thought he looked so brave.

" It turns what sweetness I have to gall to hear the
remarks of some of my neighbors. When we heard at
first that he was dead, one of my townsmen observed
that ' he dieth as the fool dieth,' which, for an instant,
suggested a likeness in him dying to my neighbor living.
Others, craven-hearted, said, disparagingly, that he threw
his life away because he resisted the Government.
Which way have they thrown their lives, pray?

" I hear another ask, Yankee-like, ' What will he gain
by it?' as if he expected to fill his pockets by the en-
terprise. If it does not lead to a surprise party, if he
does not get a new pair of boots or a vote of thanks, it
must be a failure. But he won't get anything. Well,
no ; I don't suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a
day for being hung, take the year around, but he stands
a chance to save his soul — and such a soul ! — ^which you
do not. You can get more in your market for a quart
of milk than a quart of blood, but yours is not the market
heroes carry their blood to.

" Such do not know that like the seed is the fruit, and
that in the moral world, when good seed is planted,
good fruit is inevitable ; that when you plant or bury a
hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure to spring up.
This is a seed of such force and vitality, it does not ask
our leave to germinate.

"A man does a brave and humane deed, and on all
sides we hear people and parties declaring, ' I didn't do
it, nor countenance him to do it in any conceivable way.

288 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

It can't fairly be inferred from my past career.' Ye
needn't take so much pains, my friends, to wash your
skirts of him. No one will ever be convinced that he
was any creature of yours. He went and came, as he
himself informs us, under the auspices of John Brown,
and nobody else.

" ' All is quiet in Harper's Ferry,' say the journals.
What is the character of that calm which follows when
the law and the slaveholder prevail .' I regard this event
as a touchstone designed to bring out with glaring dis-
tinctness the character of this Government. We needed
to be thus assisted to see it by the light of history. It
needed to see itself. When a government puts forth its
strength on the side of injustice, as ours, to maintain
slavery and kill the liberators of the slave, it reveals itself
simply as brute force. It is more manifest than ever that
tyranny rules. I see this Government to be effectually
allied with France and Austria in oppressing mankind.

" The only government that I recognize — and it mat-
ters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its
army, — is the power that establishes justice in the land,
never that which establishes injustice. What shall we
think of a government to which all the truly brave and
just men in the land are enemies, standing between it
and those whom it oppresses?

"Treason! Where does such treason take its rise?
I cannot help thinking of you as ye deserve, ye govern-
ments ! Can you dry up the fountain of thought? High
treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has
its origin in the power that makes and forever re-creates
man. When you have caught and hung all its human
rebels, you have accomplished nothing but your own

THE LAST OF THE PURITANS. 289

guilt. You have not struck at the fountain-head. The
same indignation which cleared the temple once will
clear it again.

" I hear many condemn these men because they were
so few. When were the good and the brave ever in the
majority? Would you have had him wait till that time
came? TiU you and I came over to him? The very
fact that he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about
him, would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes.
His company was small, indeed, because few could be
found worthy to pass muster. Each one who there laid
down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked
man, called out of many thousands, if not millions. A
man of principle, of rare courage and devoted humanity,
ready to sacrifice his life at any moment for the benefit
of his fellow-man ; it may be doubted if there were as
many more their equals in the country ; for their leader,
do doubt, had scoured the land far and wide, seeking to
swell his troop. These alone were ready to step between
the oppressor and the oppressed. Surely they were the
very best men you could select to be hung ! That was
the greatest compliment their country could pay them.
They were ripe for her gallows. She has tried a long
time ; she has hung a good many, but never found the
right one before.

" When I think of him and his six sons and his son-in-
law enlisted for this fight, proceeding coolly, reverently,
humanely to work, for months, if not years, summering and
wintering the thought, without expecting any reward but
a good conscience, while almost all America stood ranked
on the other side, I say again that it affects me as a sub-
lime spectacle.

290 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

" If he had had any journal advocating his cause, any
organ monotonously and wearisomely playing the same
old tune and then passing around the hat, it would have
been fatal to his efficiency, li he had acted in such a
way as to be let alone by the Government, he might have
been suspected. It was the fact that the tjrant must give
place to him, or he to the tyrant, that distinguished him
from all the reformers of the day that I know.

" This event advertises me that there is such a fact as
death, the possibility of a man's d)dng. It seems as if
no man had ever died in America before. If this man's
acts and words do not create a revival, it will be the
severest possible satire on words and acts that do.

" It is the best news that America has ever heard. It
has already quickened the feeble pulse of the North, and
infused more generous blood in her veins than any num-
ber of years of what is called political and commercial
prosperity. How many a man who was lately contem-
plating suicide has now something to live for !

" I am here to plfead his cause with you. I plead not
for his life, but for his character, his immortal life, and
so it becomes your cause wholly, and it is not his in the
least.

" Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was cruci-
fied ; this morning, perchance. Captain Brown was hung.
These are the two ends of the chain which is not without
its links. He is not Old Brown any longer ; he is an
angel of light. I see now that it was necessary that the
bravest and humanest man in all the country should be
hung. Perhaps he saw it himself. I almost fear that I
may yet hear of his deliverance, doubting if a prolonged
life, if any life, can do as much good as his death.

THE LAST OF THE PURITANS. 29I

" ' Misguided ! Garrulous ! Insane ! Vindictive ! '
So you write in your easy-chairs, and thus he, wounded,
responds from the floor of the Armory — clear as a cloud-
less sky, true as the voice of Nature is ! 'No man sent
me here. It was my own promptings and that of my
Maker. I acknowledge no master in human form.'

" And in what a sweet and noble strain he proceeds,
addressing his captors, who stand over him.

" ' I think, my friends, you are guilty of a great wrong
against God and humanity, and it would be perfectly
right for any one to interfere with you so far as to free
those you wilfully and wickedly hold in bondage. I
have yet to learn that God is any respecter of persons.

" ' I pity the poor in bondage, who have none to help
them J that is why I am here, not to gratify personal
animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is my sym-
pathy with the oppressed and the wronged that are as
good as you are, and as precious in the sight of God.

" ' I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all
of you people at the South, prepare yourselves for a
settlement of that question, that must come up for settle-
ment sooner than you are prepared for it. The sooner
you are prepared the better. You may dispose of me
now very easily — I am nearly disposed of already, — but
this question is still to be settled, this negro question, I
mean ; the end of that is not yet.' "

" I foresee the time," said Thoreau, " w^hen the painter
will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for his
subject. The poet will sing it ; the historian record it ;
and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration
of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future
national galler}', when at least the present form of slavery

292 IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY.

shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to
weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will
take our revenge."

A few years ago, while on a tramp through the North
Woods, I came out through the forests of North Elba, to
the old " John Brown Farm." Here John Brown lived
for many years, and here he tried to establish a colony
of freed slaves in the pure air of the mountains. Here,
too, his family remained through the stirring times when
he took part in the bloody struggles that made and kept
Kansas free.

The little old brown farmhouse stands on the edge of
the great woods, a few miles to the north of the highest
peaks of the Adirondacks. There is nothing unusual
about the house. You will find a dozen such in a few
hours' walk almost anjrwhere in the mountain parts of
New England or New York. It stands on a little hill,
" in a sightly place," as they say in that region, with no
shelter of trees around it.

At the foot of the hill in a broad curve flows the River
Au Sable, small and clear and cold, and full of trout.
It is not far above that the stream takes its rise in the
dark Indian Pass, the only place in these mountains where
the ice of winter lasts all summer long. The same ice
on the one side sends forth the Au Sable, and on the
other feeds the fountain-head of the infant Hudson
River.

In the little dooryard in front of the farmhouse is the
historic spot where John Brown's body still lies molder-
ing. There is not even a grave of his own. His bones
lie with those of his father, and the short record of his

THE LAST OF THE PURITANS. 293

life and death is crowded on the foot of his father's tomb-
stone. Near by, in the little yard, lies a huge, wander-
ing boulder, torn off years ago by the glaciers from the
granite hills that hem in Indian Pass. The boulder is
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